1 6 Country Rambles. 



which are many beautiful treasures, and descending a 

 little, we are in the meadows, the Bollin flowing at the 

 farther edge, and the mill, with its weir and water-wheel, 

 at the extremity. The very earliest spring flowers to be 

 gathered here are those of the hazel-nut, the willow, the 

 alder, and the poplar. People unacquainted with botany 

 often suppose that the latter and other timber-trees 

 belong to the flowerless class of plants. They fancy that 

 flowers occur only upon fruit-trees, and upon ornamental 

 shrubs, such as the lilac and laburnum. The mistake is 

 a perfectly natural and excusable one, seeing that the 

 established idea of a flower is of something brilliant and 

 highly coloured. A visit to the Ashley meadows in the 

 month of April soon shows that there are other flowers 

 than these. The hazel is by that time overblown, being 

 in perfection about February ; but the other trees men- 

 tioned above are covered with their curious blossoms, 

 which in every case come out before the leaves. Those 

 of the alder and poplar resemble pendent caterpillars, of 

 a fine brownish red; the willow-blooms are in dense 

 clusters, green or lively yellow, according to their sex. 

 For plants, like animals, have sex, and though in most 

 cases male and female co-exist in the same flower, it 

 happens with some, especially with the timber-trees of 

 northern latitudes, that the flowers are of only one sex, 

 some of them being male and others female. Occasion- 

 ally the entire tree is male only or female only the 

 condition of the willow and the poplar, the yellow flowers 

 of the former of which are the male, and the greenish 



