34 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 
NOTES ON BIOLOGICAL SUBJECTS. 
Read before the Hamilton Assoctatzon 
BY WM. YATES, HATCHLEY, ONT. 
if 
After a somewhat mild winter, springlike days were of frequent 
occurrence after the 24th of March. Some persons who had sugar 
bushes, began the work of tapping their maple trees as early as that 
date ; the ice in streams and ponds had disappeared by the 4th of 
April, and on the 5th the first cranes of the season were noticed in 
these parts, and the piping of the frogs was heard. 
One or two days of bright genial sunshine about the tst of 
April, is sure to cause the blossoms of the Aepaticas to peep forth 
amid the fallen dry leaves of the forest. These were ornamented 
with the downy flowerstocks and spreading petals of that welcome 
spring token in the warm afternoon sunshine of the 5th of April, and 
before the labors of the sap bush have ended the golden heads of the 
dandelion begin to adorn the sunny roadside ‘“‘banks and braes.” 
Although the /efatica’s flowers are commonly assumed to be the 
earliest floral production of our Canadian spring, such is not the in- 
variable rule, for on one occasion, now many years past, the 
blossoms of the cardamine rotundifolia appeared in a very sheltered 
spot of ill-drained woodland on the 19th of March—three or four 
days in advance of the “epfatica flower, the same season. ‘The 
erigenta bulbosa has also been known to expand its florets quite as 
early as those of the traditional hepatica, or the sanguinarta. On the 
elevated banks of the Avon stream near Stratford, Ont., specimens 
of this ‘‘harbinger of spring” have been found in flower many days 
before the remains of the wintry snowdrifts had vanished. 
The cool temperature) and drenching rains of the last days of 
May and of the first week in June had the effect of retarding the 
bloom of many species of early summer plants, such as ousfontas, 
castilleias, and polygalas, lupins, etc., yet during the last week in May, 
and for some time afterward, there grew in damp spots by roadsides 
in some parts of Brantford and Burford townships patches of the 
