102 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1891. 



warm days come. Their beauty will endure but for a moment, 

 but that moment will be sufficient for its vital purpose. Many 

 of the spring flowers are comparatively inconspicuous, and in 

 the case of the trees and shrubs are mostly in catkins. The 

 latter belong to the group of wind-fertilized flowers, those in 

 which the pollen is carried by the agency of the wind from 

 stamen to pistil. Here belong the alders, willows, hazels, the 

 hornbeam and hop-hornbeams, oaks, the walnuts, the sweet fern, 

 sweetgale, bayberry, butternut, poplars, nearly all of which are 

 among the early spring flowers. But the most general interest 

 does not lie in such flowers as these. 



Year after year the pale pink blossoms of the trailing arbutus 

 allure us to some favorite and well-remembered nook, where the 

 sweet and quiet eyes are opening under the last year's dead 

 leaves. Not so well known, but equally attractive, is the 

 hepatica, whose pale blue or white peering among its tri-lobed 

 downy leaves is the prize of the searchers for beauty. Fleeting, 

 evanescent, dropping its two sepals before the petals are fully 

 expanded and dropping its petals while you are carrying it home, 

 the white -flowered, yellow -stamened bloodroot by many a 

 brookside makes one more thread in the living garment of the 

 Deity. 



In the deep woods it may be that we shall find late in April 

 one of our rare shrubs, which is more abundant farther north, 

 leatherwood. Coming so early, the clusters of small, yellowish 

 flowers naturally precede the leaves, as is also the case with 

 others found in similar situations. The speaker then enumer- 

 ated a large number of flowering plants, many familiar, telling 

 something of the season in which they occur. 



The speaker continued : Whatever can be found anywhere of 

 botanical interest can be found in some form in our local flora 

 represented in some degree. Does " the wild marsh marigold 

 shine like fire in swamps and hollows gray" in English countries? 

 If so, it shines under another name, cowslip, in our own 

 meadows and lowlands. Do insectivorous plants attract the 

 attention of naturalists ? Nearly two-thirds of Darwin's work on 

 Insectivorous Plants is devoted to the consideration of our 

 common sun-dew. During several years that I had an oppor- 



