202 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



lately veiled in the golden glory of last summer's 

 dying leaves, have taken on the yellowish tinge 

 which properly belongs to February, because they 

 are swelled with rising sap. Each round leaf-bud 

 is twice as large and only half as dark in colour as it 

 was two months ago. Look at the willow, too, and 

 you will note a brighter tinge of colour in its shower 

 of drooping wands. If you could climb to the crest 

 of the hedgerow elm, to see why its outline seems so 

 dense against the sky, you would find every twiglet 

 beaded with the round swollen buds, from which in 

 earliest spring will burst the thousands of green, 

 papery flowers that the elm decorates its old head 

 with every year for the sun and moon to look at, 

 eighty feet above the ground. But you need not 

 crick your neck, staring so high for evidence of 

 Nature's movement. You can see it in the thousand 

 little seedling wild plants that are already jostling 

 by the score for space where there will only be stand- 

 ing-room for one next summer. Snow may bury, 

 and frost may bruise these seedlings, but no return 

 of winter's rage can put them back into their seeds 

 again. 



PAIRING BIRDS. 



And of birds the hedge-sparrow is not alone in 

 trying to steal a march on winter. The starlings 

 during the mild weather have hardly ceased singing 

 all day long ; and though, when you stroll out after 

 breakfast, you scarcely notice the first few notes of 

 a familiar melody which keeps rhythm with the 

 quickened pulse of life, presently you realize that it 



