COUNTRY LIFE
SOMETIMES, even in this island of quiet gradations, spring gallops withal. We are presented of a sudden with transformation scenes, almost as when the snow melts on Siberian plains or on Swiss Alps. The hedges that were diaphanous are thick enough in leaf of thorn and briar (most welzome in our Garden of Eden) to hide any number of nests. Not that all the birds waited for such friendly concealment. Blackbirds were born—to give one example—before April opened ; and young rooks were on the wing—on very reluctant wing—by the end of the first week. In general it was not that the spring was abnormally early, for morning frosts had done something to check things, but that its arrival was sudden. Most surprising perhaps was the opening of may blossom, which sometimes hardly appears, like the may-fly, before June. In its third and fourth week, April became a "flaming June." The loveliest of all flowering shrubs, I think, is the apple, with its colours of the perfect human complexion, and it gave the bees their honey flow out of all measure for the season. At the foot of one hedge both kex and stitchwort completely covered up the bluebells, already at their best. They should persuade Londoners to visit Kew, which is even more worth a visit for this flower than for the lilac, which Noyes hailed as the suPreme attraction in that delect- able garden.
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