this time the hepatica, anemone saxifrage, arbutus,
houstonia, and bloodroot may be counted on. A week later, the
claytonia or spring beauty, water-cress, violets, a low buttercup,
vetch, corydalis, and potentilla appear. These comprise most of the
April flowers, and may be found in great profusion in the Rock Creek
and Piny Branch region.

In each little valley or spring run, some one species predominates. I
know invariably where to look for the first liverwort, and where the
largest and finest may be found. On a dry, gravelly, half-wooded
hill-slope the bird's-foot violet grows in great abundance, and is
sparse in neighboring districts. This flower, which I never saw in the
North, is the most beautiful and showy of all the violets, and calls
forth rapturous applause from all persons who visit the woods. It
grows in little groups and clusters, and bears a close resemblance to
the pansies of the gardens. Its two purple, velvety petals seem to
fall over tiny shoulders like a rich cape.

On the same slope, and on no other, I go about the 1st of May for
lupine, or sun-dial, which makes the ground look blue from a little
distance; on the other or northern side of the slope, the arbutus,
during the first half of April, perfumes the wildwood air. A few paces
farther on, in the bottom of a little spring run, the mandrake shades
the ground with its miniature umbrellas. It begins to push its green
finger-points up through the ground by the 1st of April, but is not in
bloom till the 1st of May. It has a single white, wax-like flower,
with a sweet, sickish odor, growing immediately beneath its broad
leafy top. By the same run grow watercresses and two kinds of
anemones,--the Pennsylvania and the grove anemone. The bloodroot is
very common at the foot of almost every warm slope in the Rock Creek
woods, and, where the wind has tucked it up well with the coverlid of
dry leaves, makes its appearance almost as soon as the liverwort. It
is singular how little warmth is necessary to encourage these earlier
flowers to put forth. It would seem as if some influence must come on
in advance underground and get things ready, so that, when the outside
temperature is propitious, they at once venture out. I have found the
bloodroot when it was still freezing two or three nights in the week,
and have known at least three varieties of early flowers to be buried
in eight inches of snow.

Another abundant flower in the Rock Creek region is the sp