nual rainfall appears to have been vastly greater than at
present, and when the watercourses were consequently vastly larger and
fuller. In pleistocene days the earth's climate was evidently much
damper than at present. It was the rainiest of March weather. On no
other theory can we account for the enormous erosion of the earth's
surface, and the plowing of the great valleys. Professor Newberry
finds abundant evidence that the Hudson was, in former times, a much
larger river than now. Professor Zittel reaches the same conclusion
concerning the Nile, and Humboldt was impressed with the same fact
while examining the Orinoco and the tributaries of the Amazon. All
these rivers appear to be but mere fractions of their former selves.
The same is true of all the great lakes. If not Noah's flood, then
evidently some other very wet spell, of which this is a tradition,
lies far behind us. Something like the drought of summer is beginning
upon the earth; the great floods have dried up; the rivers are slowly
shrinking; the water is penetrating farther and farther into the
cooling crust of the earth; and what was ample to drench and cover its
surface, even to make a Noah's flood, will be but a drop in the bucket
to the vast interior of the cooled sphere.

IV

APRIL

If we represent the winter of our northern climate by a rugged
snow-clad mountain, and summer by a broad fertile plain, then the
intermediate belt, the hilly and breezy uplands, will stand for
spring, with March reaching well up into the region of the snows, and
April lapping well down upon the greening fields and unloosened
currents, not beyond the limits of winter's sallying storms, but well
within the vernal zone,--within the reach of the warm breath and
subtle, quickening influences of the plain below. At its best, April
is the tenderest of tender salads made crisp by ice or snow water. Its
type is the first spear of grass. The senses--sight, hearing,
smell--are as hungry for its delicate and almost spiritual tokens as
the cattle are for the first bite of its fields. How it touches one
and makes him both glad and sad! The voices of the arriving birds, the
migrating fowls, the clouds of pigeons sweeping across the sky or
filling the woods, the elfin horn of the first honey-bee venturing
abroad in the middle of the day, the clear piping of the little frogs
in the marshes at sundown, the camp-