COUNTRY LIFE
IT may almost be claimed on behalf of the town, or at any rate the suburb, that it is more eloquent of the spring than the country. Whole streets are lined with species of the prunus family in 'very full flower, and the earlier sorts seem to be preferred. I should doubt whether any species has so rapidly increased in circulation as the autumnal variety of Prunus Sub-hirtella. I have seen specimens in full flower wherever I have been. The blossom is rather small and white compared, say, with the almond or P. Pissardii, often to be seen blooming beside it ; but it is often very spring-like in spite of its adjective Autumnalis. The town, too, is earlier, sometimes weeks earlier, than the country, in leaf as well as flower. One notices this especially in such shrubs as the privet, partly because the old leaves that fell long ago in the town still obscure the new leaves in the country, for the privet, like the blackberry, is on the way to becoming an evergreen. The spring appearances that the town misses are the bees and the butterflies, but not necessarily the immigrant birds.
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