SPRING AT THE CAPITAL 147 
groups and clusters, and bears a close resemblance | 
to the pansies of the gardens. Its two purple, 
velvety petals seem to fall over tiny shoulders like 
a rich cape. 
On the same slope, and on no other, I go about 
the 1st of May for lupine, or sun-dial, which makes 
the ground look blue from a little distance; on the 
other or northern side of the slope, the arbutus, 
during the first half of April, perfumes the wild- 
wood air. A few paces farther on, in the bottom | 
of a little spring run, the mandrake shades the 
ground with its miniature umbrellas. It begins to 
push its green finger-points up through the ground 
by the 1st of April, but is not in bloom till the 1st 
of May. It has a single white, wax-like flower, 
with a sweet, sickish odor, growing immediately 
beneath its broad leafy top. By the same run grow | 
water-cresses and two kinds of anemones, — the 
Pennsylvania and the grove anemone. The blood- 
root is very common at the foot of almost every 
warm slope in the Rock Creek woods, and, where 
the wind has tucked it up well with the coverlid of 
dry leaves, makes its appearance almost as soon as 
the liverwort. It is singular how little warmth is 
necessary to encourage these earlier flowers to put 
forth. It would seem as if some influence must 
come on in advance underground and get things 
ready, so that, when the outside temperature is pro- 
pitious, they at once venture out. I have found 
the bloodroot when it was still freezing two or three 
nights in the week, and have known at least three 
