ys have the
old relish. April is that part of the season that never cloys upon the
palate. It does not surfeit one with good things, but provokes and
stimulates the curiosity. One is on the alert; there are hints and
suggestions on every hand. Something has just passed, or stirred, or
called, or breathed, in the open air or in the ground about, that we
would fain know more of. May is sweet, but April is pungent. There is
frost enough in it to make it sharp, and heat enough in it to make it
quick.

[Illustration: AN EVENING IN SPRING]

In my walks in April, I am on the lookout for watercresses. It is a
plant that has the pungent April flavor. In many parts of the country
the watercress seems to have become completely naturalized, and is
essentially a wild plant. I found it one day in a springy place, on
the top of a high, wooded mountain, far from human habitation. We
gathered it and ate it with our sandwiches. Where the walker cannot
find this salad, a good substitute may be had in our native spring
cress, which is also in perfection in April. Crossing a wooded hill in
the regions of the Catskills on the 15th of the month, I found a
purple variety of the plant, on the margin of a spring that issued
from beneath a ledge of rocks, just ready to bloom. I gathered the
little white tubers, that are clustered like miniature potatoes at the
root, and ate them, and they were a surprise and a challenge to the
tongue; on the table they would well fill the place of mustard, and
horseradish, and other appetizers. When I was a schoolboy, we used to
gather, in a piece of woods on our way to school, the roots of a
closely allied species to eat with our lunch. But we generally ate it
up before lunch-time. Our name for this plant was "Crinkle-root." The
botanists call it the toothwort (_Dentaria_), also pepper-root.

From what fact or event shall one really date the beginning of spring?
The little piping frogs usually furnish a good starting-point. One
spring I heard the first note on the 6th of April; the next on the
27th of February; but in reality the latter season was only two weeks
earlier than the former. When the bees carry in their first pollen,
one would think spring had come; yet this fact does not always
correspond with the real stage of the season. Before there is any
bloom anywhere, bees will bring pollen to the hive. Where do they get
it?

I have seen them gathering it on the fresh sawdust in the woodyard,
especi