18 SPIIIXG BEAUTY. 



blue skies, and silver throne-like elouds that cast their llccting 

 shadows over the tender sprinu^in*^ <^rass and corn; we have no mossy 

 lanes odorous with hhie violets. One of our old poets thus writes : 



** Ye violets tluit first apjHjar, 

 By your pure purple mantles known, 

 Like the proud virgins of the year, 

 As if the sprini^ were all your own, 

 What are ye when the rose is blown.*'* 



We miss the turfy hunks, studded with starry daisies, pale primroses 

 and a/ure hluo-bells. 



* ■ 



Our ^lav is bright and sunnv. more like to the Endish March ; 

 it is indeed a month of ijromi.se— a month of many flowers. But 

 too often its Aiir buds and ])lossoms are nipped by frost, '^and winter, 

 lingering, chills the lap of May." 



In the warmth and shelter of the forest, vegetation appears. 

 The black leaf mould, so light and rich, quickens the seedlings into 

 ra])id growth, and green leaves and opening buds follow soon after 

 the melting of the snows of winter. The starry blossoms of the 

 hepatica, blood-root, bellwort, violets, white, yellow and blue, with 

 the delicate Coptis (gold-thread), come forth and are followed by 

 many a lovely flower, increasing with the more genial seasons of 

 May and June. 



But our April flowers are but few, comparatively speaking, and 

 so we prize our early Violets, Hepaticas and Spring Beauty. 



• Sir Henrj Wotton — written in 1651. 



