Earliest Signs of Spring 



and dicotyledonous vegetation ; the former 

 much the simpler, and far more quickly and 

 abundantly responding to the warmth of spring 

 than the latter. This former group — the en- 

 dogenous — contains the grass, that hardly waits 

 for the snow to melt before it shoots up its fresh 

 green blades ; also the snow-drop, crocus, and 

 trillium, with the various liliaceous forms of life 

 conspicuously sprouting along the water-courses, 

 like the blue-flags and the " laughing daffodils." 

 The second and higher group — the exogens — 

 is thus early represented, with shght exception, 

 only by the inferior amentaceous trees and 

 shrubs, that anticipate by several weeks the 

 more highly organized varieties. 



We sometimes say that Nature makes excep- 

 tions to her laws ; but there is good reason 

 to doubt whether she ever jumps the track of 

 her own established principles. Exceptions are 

 but the unsightly gaps, from our point of view, 

 in a plan too vast for us as yet to comprehend. 

 And thus, in this matter of vegetable progres- 

 sion, our plan does not quite harmonize with 

 hers ; and so we complacently say that she now 

 and then goes off in a tangent. At all events 

 she allows, sometimes, the various types of life 

 to overlap each other, so that a lower species of 

 267 



