10 GLEANINGS FEOM NATURE. 



alike to rich and poor, to high and low, and all can 

 revel in its presence. 



To one accustomed to visit the woods and fields 

 during March there appear many unerring signs of 

 the coming spring-time which, to persons living in 

 towns and cities, are often unnoticed and unknown. 

 The growth and flowering of certain wild plants; the 

 awakening from their winter's sleep of reptiles, frogs 

 and insects ; the arrival of the first migrating birds, 

 are to the careful observer sure harbingers of the close 

 approach of the vernal season. If in March there 

 occurs, as often happens, several successive days of 

 warm weather more than a dozen kinds of wild plants 

 will come into bloom. They are the fore-runners or 

 vanguard of the eight to nine hundred species of flow- 

 ering plants which, in any county of Indiana, open 

 their petals in successive rotation between March the 

 first and mid-October. 



Perhaps the earliest flowers of spring are those of 

 the red or swamp maple, Acer rubrum Linn., a medium- 

 sized tree which grows in abundance in damp lowland 

 soil. This maple is often brought into the cities and 

 palmed off on unsuspecting buyers of shade trees as 

 the soft or white maple, Acer saccharinum Linn. Both 

 of these trees differ in their habits of flowering from 

 the rock or sugar maple, Acer saccharurn Marsh, in. 

 that their blossoms appear before their leaves. The 

 flowers of the red maple are a handsome deep red in 

 color and are arranged on very short stems in little 

 clusters near the ends of the branches. They some- 

 times open in February, as they are formed in autumn, 

 and, protected only by the enveloping bud scales, are 



