32 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
local preferences of our native plants, that, with 
miles of woods and meadows open to their 
choice, each selects only some few spots for its 
accustomed abodes, and some one among them 
all for its very earliest blossoming. There is 
often a single chosen nook, which you might 
almost cover with your handkerchief, where 
each flower seems to bloom earliest without 
variation, year by year. I know one such place 
for Hepatica a mile northeast, — another for 
Mayflower two miles southwest; and each 
year the whimsical creature is in bloom on that 
little spot when not another flower can be found 
open through the whole country round. Ac- 
cidental as the choice may appear, it is un- 
doubtedly based on laws more eternal than the 
stars; yet why all subtle influences conspire to 
bless that undistinguishable knoll no man can 
say. Another and similar puzzle offers itself 
in the distribution of the tints of flowers, — in 
these two species among the rest. There are 
certain localities, near by, where the Hepatica is 
all but white, and others where the Mayflower 
is sumptuous in pink; yet it is not traceable to 
wet or dry, sun or shadow, and no agricultural 
chemistry can disclose the secret. Is it by 
some Darwinian law of selection that the white 
Hepatica has utterly overpowered the blue, in 
our Cascade Woods, for instance, while yet in 
