1 20 April — Nettles. 



only too long in the spring landscape. There are great 

 quantities of dead light-brown rushes, which for my part 

 I am weary of, and should like to see hidden away 

 under fresher and greener growths. It is consoling that 

 so many plants come vigorously forward at this season. 

 The enormous roots of the bryony, hidden away in so 

 many places where no one suspects their existence 

 begin to prove their vigor by sending forth a few green 

 leaves, which give promise of graceful festoons. Nettles 

 are growing in great abundance under the hedges, which 

 they border with a fresh and beautiful green ; and many 

 wild places are adorned with the richer and better 

 coloring of the ground ivy, which the peasants in 

 France, I know not wherefore, have chosen to dedicate 

 to St. John. The great mullein sprouts handsomely in 

 April, with his fine large cottony leaves, and it is a 

 pleasure to meet with him again when we remember 

 his summer grandeur. Contemporary with the great 

 mullein, the barbed leaves of the arum, smooth and 

 glistening, with their irregular spots of dark, grow 

 quickly in their shady retreats. By the streams no 

 April-flowering plant is prettier than the meadow bitter- 

 cress, and I know some places where it clusters in 

 splendid constellations that bend over the water, and 

 are reflected on it 



1 Like stars on the sea 

 When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.' 



The flowers being of the purest possible white, or else 

 just delicately tinted with pinkish purple, show strongly 

 in the evening when the first approaches of twilight have 



