JANUARY 21 



lation brings us: salmon which enter a river before 

 their ovaries are much developed do so neither with 

 epicurean nor immediately matrimonial views. They 

 are fish surfeited with sea diet ; their tissues are glutted 

 with fat; they can eat no more. So, to escape por- 

 poises, seals, sea-lice, and other pelagic plagues, they 

 seek shelter in the rivers where they were bred. 



IX 



How little like the rigours of last season has been 

 the winter of 1895-96 ! This day January 20th the 

 air is still and warm ; the mist which hung winter 

 so low all morning is yielding slowly before Flowers 

 the afternoon sun, which makes the wet woodland ivy 

 gleam like malachite, and turns the fallen leaves of 

 beech and oak to glowing copper. Sheets of snowdrops 

 make mimic winter on the banks; they showed their 

 first blooms before the New Year. Frilled aconites 

 hold up their little golden cups, and already there are 

 a few azure stars on the trailing periwinkle Rousseau's 

 favourite flower. Distinguished for its delicious scent 

 is the winter heliotrope (Tussilago fragrans). This 

 plant, though it is an exotic, is as hardy as its near 

 relatives, the common coltsfoot (T. farfara) and the 

 butterbur (T. petasites); in foliage it resembles the 

 former, in flowers the latter. Few gardeners know it or 

 grow it ; yet it is a herb of such exceeding merit that 

 none ought to be without it. Nothing but severe frost 

 prevents it flowering freely through the winter months, 

 and a bunch of it scents a whole room with a perfume 



