e ground
rolled up, with a rudimentary and "touch-me-not" look, and appear to
need a maternal tongue to lick them into shape. The sun plays the
wet-nurse to them, and very soon they are out of that uncanny covering
in which they come swathed, and take their places with other green
things.

The bud scales strew the ground in spring as the leaves do in the
fall, though they are so small that we hardly notice them. All
growth, all development, is a casting off, a leaving of something
behind. First the bud scales drop, then the flower drops, then the
fruit drops, then the leaf drops. The first two are preparatory and
stand for spring; the last two are the crown and stand for autumn.
Nearly the same thing happens with the seed in the ground. First the
shell, or outer husk, is dropped or cast off; then the cotyledons,
those nurse leaves of the young plant; then the fruit falls, and at
last the stalk and leaf. A bud is a kind of seed planted in the branch
instead of in the soil. It bursts and grows like a germ. In the
absence of seeds and fruit, many birds and animals feed upon buds. The
pine grosbeaks from the north are the most destructive budders that
come among us. The snow beneath the maples they frequent is often
covered with bud scales. The ruffed grouse sometimes buds in an
orchard near the woods, and thus takes the farmer's apple crop a year
in advance. Grafting is but a planting of buds. The seed is a
complete, independent bud; it has the nutriment of the young plant
within itself, as the egg holds several good lunches for the young
chick. When the spider, or the wasp, or the carpenter bee, or the sand
hornet lays an egg in a cell, and deposits food near it for the young
when hatched, it does just what nature does in every kernel of corn or
wheat, or bean, or nut. Around or within the chit or germ, she stores
food for the young plant. Upon this it feeds till the root takes hold
of the soil and draws sustenance from thence. The bud is rooted in the
branch, and draws its sustenance from the milk of the pulpy cambium
layer beneath the bark.

Another pleasant feature of spring, which I have not mentioned, is the
full streams. Riding across the country one bright day in March, I saw
and felt, as if for the first time, what an addition to the
satisfaction one has in the open air at this season are the clear,
full watercourses. They come to the front, as it were, and lure and
hold the eye. There are no weeds, or grasses,