A SPRING REfclSH. 187 



on a tree, and fall to the ground with beaks and claws 

 locked. The male followed them about, and warbled 

 and called, but whether deprecatingly or encourag- 

 ingly I could not tell. Occasionally he would take 

 a hand, but whether to separate them or whether to 

 fan the flames, that I could not tell. So far as I 

 could see, he was highly amused, and culpably indif- 

 ferent to the issue of the battle. 



The English spring begins much earlier than ours 

 in New England and New York, yet an exception- 

 ally early April with us must be nearly, if not quite, 

 abreast with April as it usually appears in England. 

 The black-thorn sometimes blooms in Britain in Feb- 

 ruary, but the swallow does not appear till about the 

 20th of April, nor the anemone bloom ordinarily till 

 that date. The nightingale comes about the same 

 time, and the cuckoo follows close. Our cuckoo does 

 not come till near June ; but the water-thrush, which 

 Audubon thought nearly equal to the nightingale as a 

 songster (though it certainly is not), I have known to 

 come by the 21st. I have seen the sweet English 

 violet, escaped from the garden, and growing wild by 

 the roadside, in bloom on the 25th of March, which 

 is about its date of flowering at home. During the 

 same season, the first of our native flowers to appear 

 was the hepatica, which I found on April 4th. The 

 arbutus and the dicentra appeared on the 10th, and 

 the coltsfoot which, however, is an importation 

 about the same time. The bloodroot, claytonia, saxi- 

 frage, and anemone were in bloom on the l?th, and I 



