WINTER FERN-HUNTING 



A HE spring of this, our new year of 

 1909, is set by the wise makers of calen- 

 dars to begin at the vernal equinox, 

 say the twenty-first of March, but the 

 weatherwise know that on that date east- 

 ern Massachusetts is still in the thrall of 

 winter, and spring, as they see it, is not 

 due till a month later. 



Yet they are both wrong, and we need 

 but go into the woods now to prove it. 

 The spring in fact is already here. The 

 new life in which it is to express itself 

 in a thousand forms is already growing 

 and much of it had its beginning in late 

 August or early September of last year. 

 The wind out of the north may retard it 

 indeed, but it needs but a touch of the 

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