Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/181

Rh Here is a poplar twig, with well-developed, shapely buds. I pull off the outer coverings and lay bare a mass of woolly fibres, fine and soft, within which the tender blossoms lie in germ. And next is a willow stem. Already, though winter is no more than a fortnight old, the "pussy" has begun to push off its dark coverlid, as if it were in haste to be up and feel the sun. Yes, spring will soon be here, and the willow proposes not to be caught napping.

These long, slender, cinnamon-colored, silky buds, like shoemakers' awls for shape, are from a beech tree. The package is done up so tightly and skillfully that my clumsy human fingers cannot undo it without tearing it in pieces. Layer after layer I remove, taking all pains, and here at the heart is the softest of vegetable silk. How did the wood learn to secrete such delicacies, and to wrap them with such miraculous security? Why could it not wait till spring, and save the need of all this caution? I do not know. How should I? But I am glad of every such vernal prophecy, as well as of every such proof of vegetable intelligence. It