ur footfalls, while overhead the light
daily grows more subdued as the leaf-buds break and the leaves unfold.
The throb of the year's life grows stronger. All the blossoms and buds
which were formed last summer now break quickly into beauty. And,
already, before the year has fairly started, there are signs of
preparation for the following year. The dandelion is pushing up its fairy
balloons, waiting for the first breeze. The shepherd's purse already
shows many mature seeds below its little white blossoms. The keys of the
soft maple will soon be ready to fall and send out rootlets, and the
winged seeds of the white elm already lie thickly beneath the leafing
branches.

* * * * *

Each flower invites admiration and study. Dig up the root of the
Solomon's seal, a rootstock, the botanists call it. It is long, more or
less thickened and here and there is a circular scar which marks the
place from which former stems have arisen. When these leaf-bearing stems
die down they leave on this rootstock down in the ground, a record of
their having lived. The scar looks something like a wax seal and the man
who gave the plant the name of Solomon's seal had probably read that tale
in the Arabian Nights, where King Solomon's seal penned up the giant
genie who had troubled the fishermen.

Then there's the May-apple. Who does not remember his childhood days when
he pulled the little umbrellas? Even now as they come up in little
colonies, they call up memories of the fairy tales of childhood and we
almost expect to see a fairy, or a brownie, or Queen Mab herself, coming
from under them, when the summer shower, which makes their tops so
beautifully moist gray, has passed. And they also bring to mind that
charming first edition of Dr. Gray's botany, which had in it much of the
man's humor as well as his learning. Too bad that the learned scientists
who succeeded him have cut it out. "Common Honesty, very rare in some
places," he wrote, speaking of that plant. "Ailanthus, Tree of Heaven,
flowers smell of anything but heaven," was his comment on the blossoms of
our picturesque importation from China. And when he came to the May-apple
he wrote that the sweetish fruit was "eaten by pigs and boys." This made
William Hamilton Gibson remember his own boyish gorgings and he wrote:
"Think of it boys. And think of what else he says of it: 'Ovary ovoid,
stigma sessile, undulate, seeds covering the lateral placenta, each