APRIL. 91 



gemmed with flowers. The red maple is clothed in a 

 full drapery of crimson, exhibiting in April as in Octo- 

 ber, the most gorgeous spectacle in the forest. Several 

 species of willows are elegantly festooned with tassels 

 that hang like fringe from every twig; the aments of 

 some species being of a silvery whiteness; and covered 

 with silken down, and others of a bright golden hue. 

 The Balm of Gilead and other poplars, while the scales 

 are dropping from their hybernacles, to loose the young 

 flowers from their confinement, afford the most graleful 

 of all odors, combining the sweetness of the rose with 

 the terebinthine odors of the pine, and causing the 

 vernal gales of our. landscape to rival the spicy breezes 

 of Arabia. But there are exhalations that spring from 

 the soil itself, at this time of the year, that afford an 

 agreeable sensation of freshness, almost like fragrance, 

 and resembling the scent of tlie coo!, refreshing sea- 

 breezes, which, wafted overbeds of rockweed and other 

 sea plants, when the tide is low, often rise up suddenly 

 in the heat of summer. 



Though the tassel-bearing trees and shritbs, from the 

 graceful willow down to the humble tribes of hazels 

 and Dutch myrtles, are the principal flowering plants of 

 the present month, yet as the season advances, several 

 species of small flowers, anticipating the arrival of May, 

 will often add their beauty to the floral garland of 

 April. The coltsfoot already spangles the fallow tillage 

 lands and neglected gardens, with its yellow compound 

 flowers, just before the coming of the dandelion, of 

 which it is a miniature likeness ; the gill, with its whorls 

 of minute, lip-shaped blossoms, of a bright blue, may 

 soon be seen, under the shade of the fences and shrub- 

 bery, and many other plants,, not yet in flower, exhibit 

 their rising tufts of green leaves, about the fields and 



