52 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



seems less than infinitesimal that the hazel which 

 some bird has planted on the edge of the quarry, 

 among the beeches, should be fertilised by any but 

 its own pollen. But many bushes within half a mile 

 have now, not for the first time this winter, hung out 

 their catkins at full length. The pollen has fallen 

 out of each capsule on to the back of the next one 

 below it, and it needs the smallest shake to set the 

 cloud flying. It rises on the air like smoke. Like 

 smoke or steam, we see it only for a moment while 

 the separately invisible particles are crowded to- 

 gether, and then it vanishes as though it had never 

 been. Just below us a whole coppice smokes as the 

 wind comes and shakes every tree at once. All that 

 dust, too, vanishes before we can count ten, but each 

 of those million million grains of pollen is sailing its 

 own safe barque on the rising air-current. They 

 distribute themselves through the air more rapidly 

 and doubtless just as evenly, as a drop of dye might 

 spread through the lake. The atmosphere of our 

 valley is pollen. Each cubic yard of it, at any rate, 

 is capable of fertilising one of those tiny red stigmas 

 that the hazel above the quarry has put out to catch 

 nuts with. 



Wherever we look we can find catkins full of 

 powder, either now or very soon. The brook is 

 one continuous line of alders, and now along their 

 whole length a yellow glow of new catkins gleams 

 through the black old cones that have been their 

 feature through winter. Shake the yew or the box 

 on a sunny morning, and you will be rewarded with 

 just the same puffs of smoke that came from the 

 nut branch. Soon the ash, the oak, and many other 



