83' 



XV. 

 EARLY SEEDTIME. 



IT is wonderful to see how quickly the first spring plants 

 manage to set and ripen their stock of seeds. Already 

 one hasty crop has been duly shed, and now in this 

 genial May weather the second detachment of early 

 perennials is beginning to scatter its ripe fruit broadcast 

 over the basking fields. Stage after stage, in regular 

 succession, they follow one another like waves on the 

 sea, each filling up a little special corner in the rural 

 calendar, and each monopolising for the time some one 

 or other of the active external agencies by whose aid 

 vegetable life is necessarily carried on. Even now the 

 three sets of buttercups are seen here on the farm in 

 three stages side by side ; the lesser celandine, earliest 

 of the group, has blossomed long ago, and is now letting 

 its ripe capsules fall one by one from the globular heads ; 

 the bulbous buttercup, next in order of time, still shows 

 a few open flowers here and there, but most of them 

 have dropped their petals, and have the green capsules 

 just swelling with the young seeds ; finally, the tall 

 meadow buttercups and the creeping species, latest of 

 the common kinds, are only now for the first time 

 opening their golden buds. But the most conspicuous 



