THE SPIRIT OF SPRING 
5 
receding from the shore, and the Watercress is there 
fresh and green, showing that the stream has been 
but dreaming all winter. The Skunk Cabbage, that 
beautiful and malodorous flower, is already raising 
its variegated hood from the black mud. It is deter- 
mined to be first among the wild flowers. On the 
shore there are some small Sassafras trees completely 
girdled at the ground and doomed to die. The Cotton- 
tail is at once suspected, which shows the evil of a 
bad name. But there are Muskrat houses suspiciously 
near, and many evidences of amphibious activity 
in the half-frozen mud. Have the Muskrats been 
guilty of these depredations i The multitude of tiny 
wounds show that the culprit was the little Shore 
Mouse with the formidable name, Arvicola riparius , 
The leaves of the Hepatica are frozen solidly in the 
ice high up on the bank, but alive and well withal, 
and destined for a life of usefulness throughout the 
summer. What wonderful egotists we must have been 
to think the three-lobed leaf of the Hepatica was 
shaped to intimate that it could cure certain 
human ills. As if our little ills were sufficient 
to move the mighty indifference of nature ! The 
Hepatica is as indifferent to our petty needs as the 
Downy Woodpecker sounding his gong on the 
resonant oak limb or the Lordly Crow moving with 
steady strength across the colourless sky. 
