18 The Strife of March 



By March, even in backward years, its golden circles, 

 smaller and a little paler than the dandelion flower, 

 can be seen strewn in profusion along the waste and 

 arid fringes of the railways in the nearer London 

 suburbs, and between the very sleepers on the line. 

 Only the hardiest of plants could wring a living 

 from that scoriae soil ; yet the colt's-foot seems to 

 find the railway ballast no less congenial a home than 

 the baked margin of an Essex brickfield. It is, 

 indeed, one of the most stubborn of all weeds ; and 

 where it once secures a footing in the garden, in 

 spite of almost any suppressive measures, it will 

 implacably reappear. Fortunately, however, it 

 scorns high living as a rule, and prefers the stoical 

 satisfactions of its barren clods. 



There is the same isolated intensity of colour in 

 the blossoms that are expanded on leafless boughs, 

 to be mated by the boisterous spring winds. The 

 extreme instance of this characteristic concentration 

 and vividness is to be found in the minute crimson 

 stars of the hazel, which pierce the folded bud to 

 receive the dust out-shaken from the lengthening 

 catkins. The catkins of the hazel, which begin to 

 form before the leaves fall in autumn, are among 

 the best-known signs of spring, as they droop loose 

 and yellow in sheltered places from January 

 onwards ; but the bright speck of the female 

 blossom, which contains the germ of the nut, is so 

 small that it must be carefully sought for even on the 

 bare spring boughs. Most other wind-mated blos- 

 soms of early spring are more conspicuous than the 

 blossom Of the hazel, if less familiar than its catkins. 



