Spring Wild-flowers. 19 



have named them. To a certain extent, no doubt there 

 is a sequence. Every one of the four seasons, whether 

 spring, summer, autumn, or winter, resembles the total 

 of the year as to the regularity in the order of its events. 

 The glowing apple and the juicy pear follow the lily and 

 the rose, and are followed in their turn, by the aster 

 and the ivy-bloom. Similarly, in smaller compass, the 

 crocus retires before the daffodil, and the daffodil before 

 the auricula; to expect, however, that every particular 

 kind of flower should open at some precise and undevia- 

 ting point of time, even relative, would be to look for 

 the very opposite of the delightful sportiveness so 

 characteristic of the ever-youthful life of nature, which is 

 as charming, not to say as great and glorious, in its 

 play and freedom, as in its laws and inviolable order. 

 The spring flowers arrive, not in single file, but in troops 

 and companies, so that of these latter only can succession 

 be rightly predicated, and even here it is greatly affected 

 by differences of shelter, soil, and aspect. Nor are those 

 we have enumerated the whole of what may be found. 

 At least a dozen other species arrive with the earliest 

 breath of spring, and with every week afterwards, up to 

 midsummer, the beautiful stream quickens unabatingly. 

 Thoroughly to master the botany even of so limited an 

 area as that of Ashley, requires that it be made our 

 almost daily haunt. It is proper to add, that none of the 

 flowers named are rare about Manchester, or anywhere 

 in England. Almost all our first comers are universally 

 diffused. 



