152 HAMPSHIRE STREAMS AND WOODLANDS 



copse that the distant trees seem to rise through vapour 

 and smoke. Nearer, the smoke resolves itself into 

 motionless flakes of white or grey, dotting each upright 

 wand and branch like seed-pearls sewn on a velvet 

 scabbard. But at a distance the whole wood seems 

 blurred with motionless puffs of white vapour, merging 

 in the distance into a greyish haze. Plunge into the 

 copse, and the source and shape of the misty mirage is 

 explained. Every clump of underwood is studded with 

 bud or blossom, though hardly a leaf is out from fence 

 to fence. The catkins of the hazel and the tiny pink 

 star-fish flowers are almost over, but the cornel buds 

 are formed and the masses of blackthorn are powdered 

 over with tight little globes no larger than a mustard- 

 seed, in which lies packed the embryo blossom. The 

 black-poplars are still as leafless as in the bitterest 

 December frosts ; but their topmost twigs have lost 

 their rigid look and are decked with little funeral 

 plumes of sooty-black flower. At all the joints of the 

 woodbine green buds are peeping out in pairs, and on 

 the sunny edges of the copses the dog-rose is opening 

 its leaves to the wind and frost. The elder is the only 

 other native tree in leaf so early, though why this, the 

 softest and weakest of the woodland shrubs, should 

 share with the climbing woodbine and rose the honour 

 of being the first to wear the colours of spring, is still 

 among the secrets of the wood. On the wild-cherries 

 the flower-clusters are shown in miniature globes, which 

 stud the upper branches with whity-brown knobs and 

 clusters, and the Lombardy poplars, as yet leafless and 



