70 FEBRUARY 



Gilbert White kept a special eye on the flowering of the 

 yew tree, which might be obscure if the quantity of 

 pollen were not immense. His earliest recorded date 

 was St. Valentine s Day. On this Common, where the 

 gorse blooms, the junipers pour out such puffs of smoky 

 pollen that many people think it is the relic of March. 

 Perhaps the place where spring is most precisely char 

 acterised is the floor of a rough or double hedgerow. 

 Above the masses of hazel catkins are mingled with sur 

 viving berries of the dogrose, and green leaf buds may 

 be found as well, oddly coinciding with last year s fruit. 

 Below DogVmercury and cushions of kex make as green 

 a thought as ever Marvell found in the richness of his 

 summer garden. DogVmercury, a green weed very im 

 portant to the early searcher after spring, is very green 

 and in full flower. You may find purple and white dead 

 nettle (probably the most consistent and persistent 

 bloomer in the list). It is odds that you see trace of 

 young rabbits born this year, and with luck may discover 

 a thrush building in holly or thorn. At the right time 

 of day lark and tit not only robin and thrush will 

 salute you with snatches of spring song. Should the sun 

 shine a cloud of gnats will dance, as if pretending that a 

 February hedge were an August river bank. 



4- 



Your signals of spring are not seldom blanketed out 

 by evidence of sheer winter and in the frost the crocus 

 &quot; lays his, cheek to mire &quot; when the frost yields to thaw. 

 When the return of winter is expressed in snow, it is 

 more apparent than real. Snow is, of course, one of the 

 fairest of all substances, in any form, until it is fouled. 

 One can watch it falling with the same continuous 



