140 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1892. 



active life ; now there is nothing but snow, dead grass, and 

 crackling twigs. The daylight is pale, and there is perfect 

 quiet except for the gurgling of the ice-bound brook. It seems 

 as if there were no living thing : no insect, no animal, no plant ; 

 perhaps a few fish and stupid frogs in the water, that is all. In 

 summer how luxuriant and in winter how bare and forsaken ! 



Yet, if we look more closely, we observe that already in spite 

 of the bitter cold, flower buds have begun to swell ; the willow 

 seems filled with sap, and its bark has assumed a ruddier hue ; 

 that here and there in open pools, the caddis worms and water- 

 fleas are moving to and fro in a wilderness of newly grown 

 draparnaldia and fontinalis. We had expected to find some 

 life in the water but were not prepared for the swelling 

 of buds and the coloring of bark. By what subtle influences 

 are the forces set in motion, which start the flowing sap 

 and form the vital protoplasm ? Is there a clear dividing line 

 between the fall of the fruit and the spring of the leaf? What 

 is the earliest plant to bloom, and the second, and third, and 

 when do they bloom so fast that no account can be kept? 

 These and a hundred others, are the questions which come to 

 our mind over and over again, impelling us to activity ; so with 

 overcoat and muflier we wander forth into the waste lands which 

 skirt the city on every side. 



Here, in New England, much of our interest in flowers is 

 due to the succession of seasons. With what a keen interest 

 do we, sometimes as early as the last of January, perceive the 

 swelling of buds on the deciduous trees. Whatever may have 

 been the weather, the maple and the elm always show some- 

 thing of the life that is within them, long before we notice other 

 signs of coming spring. And what shall we say of the willow? 

 Sometimes a warm spell in December brings forth the "pussies" 

 as if the shrub were deceived by the early promise of warm 

 weather. But the red alder is usually the first to show genuine 

 flowers, and to shower forth its store of pollen. Yet in these 

 winter months floral activity is shown chiefly by those trees and 

 shrubs whose blossoms were started during the previous autumn ; 

 packages prepared and tied up, waiting merely to be opened. 



