APRIL. 89 



curiosity is roused to see the birds, although their identity 

 is without question. As we peer into the thickets, a third 

 ground-loving Urd flits up before us, a skulking hermit 

 thrush, and, mounting a low branch of a tree, it stares 

 back at us, with drooping wings, jerking tail, and mute as 

 those monks who are sworn to silence. When we remem- 

 ber that this same thrush is in New England almost 

 without a rival as a summer songster, it is a standing 

 mystery why here, for several months, it is so persistently 

 silent. Indeed, it occasionally nests in the romantic valley 

 of the Wissahickon, not forty miles away, and I am told, 

 even then has been seldom heard to sing ; and the opinion 

 has also been expressed that such nesting birds do not 

 compare at all favorably with our splendid wood thrush. 

 As we saw them to-day running among the thousands of 

 nodding toothwort blossoms, they were less attractive 

 than would have been so many mice. But the flowers I 

 have mentioned never fail to command attention. Here 

 everything was suited to their needs, and they overtopped 

 the violets, spring beauty, bluets, and even crowded to ob- 

 scure nooks that marvel of azure bloom, grape-hyacinth's 

 clustered bells. 



Hard by, the rank mandrake or May-apple was not only 

 beautiful but suggestive. Many a plant was a telling in- 

 stance of indomitable pluck ; or, shall we say, like many 

 a mortal, born to pitiless ill-luck. Before the frost has 

 lost its hold upon the stout oak leaves that have lain the 

 winter long upon the ground, the leaf- wrapped stalk of the 

 May-apple, that can be likened to nothing so much as to 

 a closed umbrella, pierces the thin crust. Many meet 

 with a serious obstacle to their upward growth in the 

 leaves upon the ground, but their progress is never wholly 

 checked. Apparently unable to push it aside, the May- 

 apple pierces the dead leaf, and then lifts it up, often half 

 a, foot above the ground. A decided victory seems at first 



