APRIL DAYS 63 
May Day is never allowed to pass in this com- 
munity without profuse lamentations over the 
tardiness of our spring as compared with that 
of England and the poets. Yet it is easy to 
exaggerate this difference. Even so good an 
observer as Wilson Flagg is betrayed into say- 
ing that the epigzea and hepatica “seldom make 
their appearance until after the middle of 
April” in Massachusetts, and that “it is not 
unusual for the whole month of April to pass 
away without producing more than two or three 
species of wild-flowers.” But I have formerly 
found the hepatica in bloom at Mount Auburn, 
for three successive years, on the 27th of March ; 
and it has since been found in Worcester on the 
17th, and in Danvers on the 12th. The May- 
flower is usually as early, though the more 
gradual expansion of the buds renders it less 
easy to give dates. And there are nearly twenty 
species which I have noted, for five or six years 
together, as found always before May Day, and 
therefore properly to be assigned to April. The 
list includes bloodroot, cowslip, houstonia, saxi- 
frage, dandelion, chickweed, cinquefoil, straw- 
berry, mouse-ear, bellwort, dogtooth violet, five 
species of violet proper, and two of anemone. 
These are all common flowers, and easily ob- 
served ; but the catalogue might be increased 
by rare ones, as the white corydalis, the smaller 
