Spring Nooks in Winter 299 



hard for spring flowers to reach air and light. The 

 snowdrop can be found flowering in a bramble 

 thicket as late as the March equinox, lifting its 

 white head on a stem eight or nine inches long, in 

 its struggle after the open sky. In the same way 

 the earliest primroses have the shortest stems, while 

 they grow three times as long in the green tangle 

 of the April lanes. These early flowers are saved 

 from the fiercer competition in the later hedgerows, 

 which forces their successors to grow taller and 

 taller as summer goes on. But nature is not perfect 

 at every point ; and their habituation to easier 

 conditions makes it hard for them to find air in 

 some sheltered situations which otherwise would 

 suit them best. The most ingenious method of 

 overcoming this difficulty of combining shelter 

 with space and light is that of the stitchwort, 

 which will presently open its white stars among 

 the earliest bluebells. Its old stems die away into 

 a withered tangle ; but life still runs in them, and 

 the new leaves bud from their joints, and are thus 

 kept clear of the litter choking the soil. These 

 grass-like tufts shooting from brown stems are one 

 of the first signs of new life, like the leafing of the 

 honeysuckle bines. 



Pits and wayside hollows form permanent refuges 

 in winter for some of the least migratory of our 

 birds, such as the blackbird and hedge-sparrow. 

 In most English woods and gardens blackbirds and 

 song-thrushes seem to be birds of closely similar 

 habits. But thrushes have far more of the wander- 

 ing instinct, chiefly because they are less able to 



