38 PHENOMENA OF PLANT-LIFE. 



numbers of the plants belonging to the great race 

 which includes rosemary and lavender, — in Central 

 America strange and uncouth forms of cactus, — at 

 the Cape of Good Hope, heaths and evergreens almost 

 countless. In no degree surprising, then, is it to find 

 a special season so beautifully characterized ; the idea 

 that gives lineaments to the whole world is that which 

 operates to make our April and May so sweet and re- 

 freshing. 



There is considerable difference in the period at which 

 the leaves of trees and plants unfold. So considera- 

 ble is it that almanacs have frequently been construct- 

 ed in which the succession of days has been denoted 

 by the citation of the trees which on the days indicat- 

 ed, or thereabouts, expand their buds, and unfold their 

 leaves. Such an almanac can never be made a uni- 

 versal one, because dififerences of latitude, and diver- 

 sities of climate even in the same latitude, materially 

 aflect the time of commencement. But the sequence is 

 always the same, or pretty nearly so, reminding us of 

 what is observable in the sky. The stars, by other 

 persons, are from no point of view, that is at all dis- 

 tant from our own, seen in exactly the same places 

 that we see them ; their places relatively to one another 

 are nevertheless, always identical. In one part of 

 England a tree may open its leaves by the 1st of 

 March, and another, alongside of it, not till April 1. 

 In a different part the first-named tree may be a month 



