ANEMONES AND SPRING.
What is the surest symbol or symptom of spring in England ? Some leaves and flowers obey no calendar. Primroses have been blooming more or less freely on individual roots, though not of course in mass, since December 18th last ; and garden primulas have kept them company. Some hazel catkins were shedding pollen a month before any female flowers were even likely to appear. The gorse blooms in all months ; and " the maze of quick," which Tennyson picked as first sign of spring, burgeons at very different dates. Occasional bushes came out weeks before their neighbours, and a quick in Shropshire may precede a quick in Hants. By way of contrast the most regular of all the flowers is, I think, the wild anemone. Most bulbs are more punctual than other sorts of flower, and this, always flourishing in the shelter of trees, is peculiarly independent of weather. Blooms were out this year about March 14th in the Home Counties. Soon they will be in mass, and are as well worth a pilgrimage as, say, the plum orchards at Evesham, the wild cherry in Hertfordshire. or the chestnuts at Richmond. One naturalist in the South used to regard spring as a race between the opening of the anemone and the song of the first chiffchaff ; but the anemone generally won, I fancy. It certainly has this year. But the anemones and the Lent lilies ran something very like a dead
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