and a few gnawed nutshells dropped coquettishly by the squirrels into the crevices of the bark.  All else is bare, but prophetic:  buds everywhere, the whole splendor of the coming summer concentrated in those hard little knobs on every bough; and clinging here and there among them, a brown, papery chrysalis, from which shall yet wave the superb wings of the Luna moth.  An occasional shower patters on the dry leaves, but it does not silence the robin on the outskirts of the wood:  indeed, he sings louder than ever, though the song-sparrow and the bluebird are silent.

Then comes the sweetness of the nights in latter April.  There is as yet no evening-primrose to open suddenly, no cistus to drop its petals; but the May-flower knows the hour, and becomes more fragrant in the darkness, so that one can then often find it in the woods without aid from the eye.  The pleasant night-sounds are begun; the hylas are uttering their shrill peep from the meadows, mingled soon with hoarser toads, who take to the water at this season to deposit their spawn.  The tree-toads soon join them; but one listens in vain for bullfrogs, or katydids, or grasshoppers, or whippoorwills, or crickets:  we must wait for them until the delicious June.

The earliest familiar token of the coming season is the expansion of the stiff catkins of the alder into soft, drooping tresses.  These are so sensitive, that, if you pluck them at almost any time during the winter, a day’s bright sunshine will make them open in a glass of water, and thus they eagerly yield to every moment of April warmth.  The blossom of the birch is more delicate, that of the willow more showy, but the alders come first.  They cluster and dance everywhere upon the bare boughs above the watercourses; the blackness of the buds is softened into rich brown and yellow; and as this graceful creature thus comes waving into the spring, it is pleasant to remember that the Norse Eddas fabled the first woman to have been named Embla, because she was created from an alder-bough.

The first wild-flower of the spring is like land after sea.  The two which, throughout the Northern Atlantic States, divide this interest are the Epigaea repens (May-flower, ground-laurel, or trailing-arbutus) and the Hepatica triloba (liverleaf, liverwort, or blue anemone).  Of these two, the latter is perhaps more immediately exciting on first discovery; because it does not, like the epigaea, exhibit its buds all winter, but opens its blue eyes almost as soon as it emerges from the ground.  Without the rich and delicious odor of its compeer, it has an inexpressibly fresh and earthy scent, that seems to bring all the promise of the blessed season with it; indeed, that clod of fresh turf with the inhalation of which Lord Bacon delighted to begin the day must undoubtedly have been full of the roots of our little hepatica.  Its healthy sweetness belongs to the opening year, like Chaucer’s poetry; and one