How Dog’s Tooth Violets Grow 
bulb in the course of the season sends down a shoot and 
develops another bulb at the further end an inch or two 
under ground. The next year this bulb number two usually 
sends up only a single leaf, and at the same time lets down 
another shoot into the earth, there to develop a third bulb 
which is perhaps three or four inches below the surface of 
the ground. From this deepest bulb, the others meantime 
having died, two leaves will arise the third year, and the 
charming flower we all love appears with them. Like the 
efflorescence of a beautiful human soul, the blossom is no 
hasty, superficial growth, but is the crown of a life whose 
springs lie deep. 
The slippery elm is already setting its seeds—those flat, 
filmy disks that come floating down upon us put of the tree- 
tops like flakes of ethereal wampum, to our puzzlement 
until we have learned what they are. The slippery elm, 
which is not uncommon along Pennsylvania fence rows and 
on the fertile banks of sylvan streams, is a somewhat 
homely tree, being short and ungainly in comparison with 
the stately grace of its classic cousin the American elm— 
the elm of history—but it is firmly endeared to all hearts 
by reason of its fragrant, mucilaginous inner bark, which 
everybody knows. On a damp day in spring the atmos¬ 
phere of woods where these trees are abundant is per¬ 
ceptibly perfumed with the characteristic odor of this bark. 
To smell it there is a pleasant experience, the memory of 
which abides with us long after we have returned indoors 
serving to make indoors tolerable. 
April 25. —Everybody has a warm spot in his heart for 
the ferns; even nature is disposed to indulge them a little 
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