across the ocean to the New World, adorning the sermons of Cotton
Mather, the humor of Hosea Bigelow, and the nature poems of Whittier.

_"For ages, on our river borders,
These tassels in their tawny bloom
And willowy studs of downy silver
Have prophesied of spring to come.

"Thanks, Mary, for this wildwood token
Of Freya's footsteps drawing near;
Almost, as in the rune of Asgard,
The growing of the grass I hear."_

Nor must the hazel in this earliest spring bouquet be forgotten. The
crimson stars of its fertile flowers, ten or a dozen little rays at
the ends of the scaly buds on the bare stems, are the most richly
colored flowers of the earliest spring. Some years they are formed as
early as the twentieth of March. When you find them then look for the
re-appearance of the mud-turtles down in the valleys and listen for
the first feeble croaks of the frogs. The old Greeks watched the tiny
inner scales of these fertile flowers grow into the husk of the nut,
fancied its resemblance to a helmet, and called the bush _corys_;
whence its botanic name _corylus_. Its English name comes from the
Saxon _haesle_, a cap. The growing hazel nuts gladdened the children
of most of the early civilized world. One of the shepherds in Vergil's
fifth eclogue invites the other to "sit beneath the grateful shade,
which hazels interlaced with elms have made;" but this hazel of which
Menelaus spoke was a tree. The Romans regarded the hazel as an emblem
of peace and a means of reconciling those who had been estranged. When
the gods made Mercury their messenger they gave him a hazel rod to be
used in restoring harmony among the human race. Later he added the
twisted serpents at the top of this caduceus. The caduceus also had
the power of producing sleep, hence Milton calls it "the opiate rod."

When the crimson threads appear in the scaly buds the staminate
catkins are lengthening, and soon the high wind shakes the golden
pollen over all the copse. These flowers which appear before the
leaves all depend upon the wind for their fertilization. That is why
they come before the leaves. And there is always wind enough to meet
all their needs.

March is a masculine month. It was named after the war god and it
always lives up to its traditions. It has had scant courtesy from the
literary men.

_"Ah, passing few are they who speak,
Wild, stormy month, in praise of thee."_

'Twas a night in March