XV. 



EARLY SEEDTIME. 



IT is wonderful to see how quickly the first spring 

 plants manage to set and ripen their stock of seeds. 

 Already one hasty crop has been duly shed, and now in 

 this genial May weather the second detachment of early 

 perennials is beginning to scatter its ripe fruit broadcast 

 over the basking fields. Stage after stage, in regular 

 succession, they follow one another like waves on the 

 sea, each filling up a little special corner in the rural cal- 

 endar, and each monopolizing for the time some one or 

 other of the active external agencies by whose aid vege- 

 table life is necessarily carried on. Even now the three 

 sets of buttercups are seen here on the farm in three 

 stages side by side ; the lesser celandine, earliest of the 

 group, has blossomed long ago, and is now letting its 

 ripe capsules fall one by one from the globular heads ; 

 the bulbous buttercup, next in order of time, still shows a 

 few open flowers here and there, but most of them have 

 dropped their petals, and have the green capsules just 

 swelling with the young seeds ; finally, the tall meadow 

 buttercups and the creeping species, latest of the com- 

 mon kinds, are only now for the first time opening their 

 golden buds. But the most conspicuous seeds of all in 

 the Fore Acre just at present are the dandelion clocks ; 

 and it is pleasant to sit in the sun and watch the wind 

 taking off one little feathery parachute after another 

 from the head, till the smooth round disk is left at last 

 bald and naked. If we were not so accustomed to dan- 



