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There were afternoons when the world was flooded with silver light, when the fields were lucent in the sun; and afternoons stained with blue, the landscape like a tapestry woven in delicate grins on a ground of indigo. The arbutus, all aglow and fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala were past, but they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the rust-red bloom of the ginger.

There were afternoons when the world was flooded with silver light, when the fields were lucent in the sun; and afternoons stained with blue, the landscape like a tapestry woven in delicate grins on a ground of indigo. The arbutus, all aglow and fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala were past, but they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the rust-red bloom of the ginger.

Great colonies of umbrella-leaved May-apple are breaking into white flowers. The broad, lily-like leaves of the true and false Solomon's seal are even more attractive than their blossoms. Ferns, bellwort, wild sarsaparilla, all help to soften our footfalls, while overhead the light daily grows more subdued as the leaf-buds break and the leaves unfold. The throb of the year's life grows stronger.

And there are nearly twenty species which I have noted, for five or six years together, as found before May-Day, and which may therefore be properly assigned to April. The list includes bloodroot, cowslip, houstonia, saxifrage, dandelion, chickweed, cinquefoil, strawberry, mouse-ear, bellwort, dog's-tooth violet, five species of violet proper, and two of anemone.

If these midsummer wood flowers harmonize so well, how much more charming will be the blossoms of early spring, a season when the white birch is quite the most conspicuous tree in the landscape! Picture dog-tooth violets, spring beauties, bellwort, Quaker-ladies, and great tufts of violets, shading from white to deepest blue, in such a setting!

But it cannot ordinarily be expected before the twentieth, in Eastern Massachusetts, and rather later in the interior; while by the same date I have also found near Boston the Cowslip or Marsh-Marigold, the Spring-Saxifrage, the Anemones, the Violets, the Bellwort, the Houstonia, the Cinquefoil, and the Strawberry-blossom.

There were afternoons when the world was flooded with silver light, when the fields were lucent in the sun; and afternoons stained with blue, the landscape like a tapestry woven in delicate grins on a ground of indigo. The arbutus, all aglow and fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala were past, but they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the rust-red bloom of the ginger.

Less effective, but well worth a moment's examination, are the methods by which leaves are opposed as fences for the discouragement of thieves. Here, in a Bellwort, is a perfoliate leaf that encircles the stem upon which it grows; and there in a Honeysuckle is a connate leaf on much the same plan, formed of two leaves, stiff and strong, soldered at their bases.