IF

APRIL.

we represent the winter of our northern climate by a rugged snow-clad mountain, and summer by a broad fertile plain, then the intermediate belt, the hilly and breezy uplands, will stand for spring, with March reaching well up into the region of the snows, and April lapping well down upon the greening fields and unloosened currents, not beyond the limits of winter's sallying storms, but well within the vernal zone,within the reach of the warm breath and subtle, quickening influences of the plain below. At its best, April is the tenderest of tender salads made crisp by ice or snow water. Its type is the first spear of grass. The senses-sight, hearing, smell-are as hungry for its delicate and almost spiritual tokens, as the cattle are for the first bite of its fields. How it touches one and makes him both glad and sad! The voices of the arriving birds, the migrating fowls, the clouds of pigeons sweeping across the sky or

filling the woods, the elfin horn of the first honey-bee venturing abroad in the middle of the day, the clear piping of the little frogs in the marshes at sundown, the camp-fire in the sugar-bush, the smoke seen afar rising over the trees, the tinge of green that comes so suddenly on the sunny knolls and slopes, the full translucent streams, the waxing and warming sun, how these things and others like them are noted by the eager eye and ear! April is my natal month, and I am born again into new delight and new surprises at each return of it. indescribable charm to me. are like the calls of the first birds-like that of the phoebe-bird, or of the meadow-lark. Its very snows are fertilising, and are called the poor man's manure.

Its name has an Its two syllables

Then its odours! I am thrilled by its fresh and indescribable odours-the perfume of the bursting sod, of the quickened roots and rootlets, of the mould under the leaves, of the fresh furrows. No other month has odours like it. The west wind the other day came fraught with a perfume that was to the sense of smell what a wild and delicate strain of music is to the ear. It was almost transcendental. I walked across the hill with my nose in the air taking it in. It

lasted for two days. I imagined it came from the willows of a distant swamp, whose catkins were affording the bees their first pollen,- -or did it come from much further— from beyond the horizon, the accumulated breath of innumerable farms and budding forests? The main characteristic of these April odours is their uncloying freshness. They are not sweet, they are oftener bitter, they are penetrating and lyrical. I know well the odours of May and June, of the world of meadows and orchards bursting into bloom, but they are not so ineffable and immaterial and so stimulating to the sense as the incense of April.

The season of which I speak does not correspond with the April of the almanac in all sections of our vast geography. It answers to March in Virginia and Maryland, while in parts of New York and New England it laps well over into May. It begins when the partridge drums, when the hyla pipes, when the shad start up the rivers, when the grass greens in the spring runs, and it ends when the leaves are unfolding and the last snow-flake dissolves in mid-air. It is the first of May when the first swallow appears, when the whip-poor-will is heard, when the wood-thrush sings, but it is April as long as

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there is snow upon the mountains, no matter what the almanac may say. Our April is, in fact, a kind of Alpine summer, full of such contrasts and touches of wild, delicate beauty as no other season affords. The deluded citizen fancies there is nothing enjoyable in the country till June, and so misses the freshest, tenderest part. It is as if one should miss strawberries and begin his fruit eating with melons and peaches. These last are good-supremely so, they are melting and luscious, but nothing so thrills and penetrates the tastes and wakes up and teases the papilla of the tongue as the uncloying strawberry. What midsummer sweetness half so distracting as its brisk sub-acid flavour, and what splendour of full-leaved June can stir the blood like the best of leafless April?

One characteristic April feature, and one that delights me very much, is the perfect emerald of the spring runs while the fields are yet brown and sere,-strips and patches of the most vivid velvet green on the slopes and in the valleys. How the eye grazes

there and is filled and refreshed? I had forgotten what a marked feature this was until I recently rode in an open wagon for three days through a mountainous, pastoral

country, remarkable for its fine springs. Those delicious green patches are yet in my eye. The fountains flowed with May. Where no springs occurred, there were hints and suggestions of springs about the fields and by the road-side in the freshened grasssometimes overflowing a space in the form of an actual fountain. The water did not quite get to the surface in such places, but sent its influence.

The fields of wheat and rye, too, how they stand out of the April landscape-great green squares on a field of brown or grey !

Among April sounds there is none more welcome or suggestive to me than the voice of the little frogs piping in the marshes. No bird-note can surpass it as a spring token; and as it is not mentioned, to my knowledge, by the poets and writers of other lands, I am ready to believe it is characteristic of our season alone. You may be sure April has really come when this little amphibian creeps out of the mud and inflates its throat. We talk of the bird inflating its throat, but you should see this tiny minstrel inflate its throat, which becomes like a large bubble, and suggests a drummer-boy with his drum slung very high. In this drum, or by the aid of it, the sound is produced. Generally the