276 SPRING PROGRESS. 



brightening in verdure, and the higher hills 

 crested with snow; and how marvellous, that 

 with such bleak winds as have lately pre- 

 vailed, and a temperature, at night, at or near 

 the freezing point, and occasionally below it, the 

 buds should be bursting, the flowers expanding, 

 and vegetation generally making such progress ! 

 PISCATOK. Eemember that the sun is now 

 exerting a powerful influence, warming the earth 

 and the waters, and thus favourable to the 

 ascent of the sap, and the active processes of 

 change on which vegetable growth depends. 

 Eemember, moreover, that the determined time 

 is arrived, when, in the course of nature, a large 

 number of our plants awake as it were from 

 their winter sleep, and spring into active life : 

 each species observing its period with wonderful 

 regularity, denoting a vis insita in the individuals 

 almost as strongly marked as in the instance of 

 animals. It would be no great stretch of fancy 

 to associate the budding or flowering of the 

 one with the hatching and birth of the other. 

 We might couple the appearance of the snow- 

 drop and sweet-scented violet with the exclusion 

 from their ova of the young of our favourite 

 fish, the Salmonidse ; flowers next in succession 



