e earliest place; indeed,
I once found it in Brookline on the seventh of April. 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. Varying, of course, in different spots and
years, the arrival of this coterie is yet nearly simultaneous, and they
may all be expected hereabouts before May-day at the very latest. After
all, in spite of the croakers, this festival could not have been much
better-timed, the delicate blossoms which mark the period are usually in
perfection on this day, and it is not long before they are past their
prime.

Some early plants which have now almost disappeared from Eastern
Massachusetts are still found near Worcester in the greatest
abundance,--as the larger Yellow Violet, the Red Trillium, the Dwarf
Ginseng, the Clintonia or Wild Lily-of-the-Valley, and the pretty
fringed Polygala, which Miss Cooper christened "Gay-Wings." Others again
are now rare in this vicinity, and growing rarer, though still abundant
a hundred miles farther inland. In several bits of old swampy wood one
may still find, usually close together, the Hobble-Bush and the Painted
Trillium, the Mitella, or Bishop's-Cap, and the snowy Tiarella. Others
again have entirely vanished within ten years, and that in some cases
without any adequate explanation. The dainty white Corydalis, profanely
called "Dutchman's-Breeches," and the quaint woolly Ledum, or Labrador
Tea, have disappeared within that time. The beautiful Linnaea is still
found annually, but flowers no more; as is also the case, in all but one
distant locality, with the once abundant Rhododendron. Nothing in Nature
has for me a more fascinating interest than these secret movements of
vegetation,--the sweet blind instinct with which flowers cling to old
domains until absolutely compelled to forsake them. How touching is the
fact, now well known, that salt-water plants still flower beside the
Great Lakes, yet dreaming of the time when those waters were briny as
the sea! Nothing in the demonstrations of Geology seems grander than the
light lately thrown by Professor Gray, from the analogies between the
flora of Japan and of North America, upon the successive epochs of heat
which led the wandering flowers al