COUNTRY LIFE
A GROUP of nut trees—mixed cobs and filberts—were overnight a gay curtain, of the jalousie type, of bright yellom% and bright yellow were the jasmine flowers looking through the upper window. In the morning both had changed to silver. The hoar-frost was long in staple on flower and stem, as on blade and fence. But neither suffered like Meredith's crocus which "laid its cheek to mire" and never rose again. Both the catkins and the flowers resumed their gold before the day was out, as a field grows yellow with buttercup when the sun opens the flowers. I searched in vain among the nut catkins for the appearance of the little crimson female flowers. They are wiser than the male ; and it is curious —for nature is an adept at synchronisation—how year after year, but especially in warm winters, the male flowers shed a deal of pollen long before the hour of useful fertility. Nuts are formed none the less. Not that it matters in the least. Every year they are all con- sumed by squirrels long before the kernels are big enough to be worth picking. Birds do wait till berries are ripe. Squirrels, at any rate the grey sort, evince no such restraint.
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