148 WAKE-ROBIN 
varieties of early flowers to be buried in eight 
inches of snow. 
Another abundant flower in the Rock Creek re- 
gion is the spring beauty. Like most others, it 
grows in streaks. A few paces from where your 
attention is monopolized by violets or arbutus, it is 
arrested by the claytonia, growing in such profusion | 
that it is impossible to set the foot down without | 
crushing the flowers. Only the forenoon walker 
sees them in all their beauty, as later in the day | 
their eyes are closed, and their pretty heads drooped 
in slumber. In only one locality do I find the 
lady’s-slipper, —a yellow variety. The flowers | 
that overleap all bounds in this section are the hous- | 
tonias. By the 1st of April they are very notice- | 
able in warm, damp places along the borders of the ' 
woods and in half-cleared fields, but by May these | 
localities are clouded with them. They become | 
visible from the highway across wide fields, and - 
look like little puffs of smoke clinging close to the 
ground. 
On the 1st of May I go to the Rock Creek or 
Piny Branch region to hear the wood thrush.” I 
always find him by this date leisurely chanting his 
lofty strain; other thrushes are seen now also, or 
even earlier, as Wilson’s, the olive-backed, the 
hermit, —the two latter silent, but the former 
musical. 
Occasionally in the earlier part of May I find the 
woods literally swarming with warblers, exploring 
every branch and leaf, from the tallest tulip to the 
