of course, the main thing; a good reader
cares for little else; I care for little else myself. But when you
take your coin to the assay office it must be weighed and tested, and
in the comments referred to I (unwisely perhaps) sought to smelt this
gold of the poets in the naturalist's pot, to see what alloy of error
I could detect in it. Were the poems true to their last word? They
were not, and much subsequent investigation has only confirmed my
first analysis. The general truth is on my side, and the specific
fact, if such exists in this case, on the side of the poets. It is
possible that there may be a fragrant yellow violet, as an exceptional
occurrence, like that of the sweet-scented, arrow-leaved species above
referred to, and that in some locality it may have bloomed before the
hepatica; also that Lowell may have seen a belated dandelion or two in
June, amid the clover and the buttercups; but, if so, they were the
exception, and not the rule,--the specific or accidental fact, and not
the general truth.

Dogmatism about nature, or about anything else, very often turns out
to be an ungrateful cur that bites the hand that reared it. I speak
from experience. I was once quite certain that the honey-bee did not
work upon the blossoms of the trailing arbutus, but while walking in
the woods one April day I came upon a spot of arbutus swarming with
honey-bees. They were so eager for it that they crawled under the
leaves and the moss to get at the blossoms, and refused on the instant
the hive-honey which I happened to have with me, and which I offered
them. I had had this flower under observation more than twenty years,
and had never before seen it visited by honey-bees. The same season I
saw them for the first time working upon the flower of bloodroot and
of adder's-tongue. Hence I would not undertake to say again what
flowers bees do not work upon. Virgil implies that they work upon the
violet, and for aught I know they may. I have seen them very busy on
the blossoms of the white oak, though this is not considered a honey
or pollen yielding tree. From the smooth sumac they reap a harvest in
midsummer, and in March they get a good grist of pollen from the
skunk-cabbage.

I presume, however, it would be safe to say that there is a species of
smilax with an unsavory name that the bee does not visit, _herbacea_.
The production of this plant is a curious freak of nature. I find it
growing along the fences where one would lo