16 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



passing look at it as a place for a nest In our 

 southern country a nest is seldom actually placed 

 among the straight and brittle twigs of the elder. 

 Before the instinct becomes overwhelming, some other 

 tree offers hospitality. But farther north you will 

 find almost all the early chaffinches weaving their 

 homesteads in this unaccommodating but early leafing 

 tree. 



Our woodland hawthorn has sprouted so far that 

 we can break off the tips of green and eat them as 

 " bread and cheese," as we learned to do soon after we 

 learned to walk. Where the accidental collaboration 

 of man has happened, one of Nature's greenhouses 

 has done more wonderfully yet. A manure heap has 

 caught a spray of the hedge and has forced it so 

 effectively that we can count the blossoms of May 

 upon it, and, opening the petals, can see the black- 

 and-red stamens that will so sweeten the air on the 

 other twigs two months hence. But come on into 

 the wood and revisit the old greenhouses where the 

 first blossoms have been found for the last twenty 

 years. 



This southern slope of many acres is ablaze with 

 the green fire of setter-wort, our native Christmas 

 rose, which has been coming into flower since the 

 turn of the year. The spurge-laurel, too, is crowded 

 with blossom under its crown. It was so when the 

 frost fringed its glossy leaves with woolly crystals, 

 and it is equally precocious in the open and in the 

 sheltered parts of the wood. It is in the sudden notch 

 beyond, where a plantation of spruce cuts off the 

 attentions of the north wind, that we find our early 

 primroses. They are rooted in the rich decay of oak 



