A SPRING RELISH, 



delicate skin of some golden-haired mole. 

 The young sycamore balls lay aside their 

 fur wrappings early in May. The flower 

 tassels of the European maple, too, come 

 packed in a slightly furry covering. The 

 long and fleshy inner scales that enfold the 

 flowers and leaves are of a clear olive green, 

 thinly covered with silken hairs like the 

 young of some animals. Our sugar maple 

 is less striking and beautiful in the bud, 

 but the flowers are more graceful and 

 fringelike. 



Some trees have no bud scales. The 

 sumac presents in early spring a mere fuzzy 

 knot, from which, by and by, there emerges 

 a soft, furry, tawny-colored kitten's paw. 

 I know of nothing in vegetable nature that 

 seems so really to be born as the ferns. 

 They emerge from the ground rolled up, 

 with a rudimentary and "touch-me-not" 

 look, and appear to need a maternal tongue 

 to lick them into shape. The sun plays 

 the wet-nurse to them, and very soon they 

 are out of that uncanny covering in which 

 they come swathed, and take their places 

 with other green things. 



The bud scales strew the ground in spring 

 as the leaves do in the fall, though they are 

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