We were by this time beyond the "Forest Administration" hut, and close upon the snow, which lay in narrow but deep drifts among the trees, the wood anemones and fine hepaticas growing in groups close by.

He is not thinking of any bush, no matter how beautiful, but of trailing arbutus, hepaticas, bloodroot, anemones, saxifrage, violets, dogtooth violets, spring beauties, "cowslips," buttercups, corydalis, columbine, Dutchman's breeches, clintonia, five-finger, and all the rest of that bright and fragrant host which, ever since he can remember, he has seen covering his native hills and valleys with the return of May.

The smaller blue ones took very acceptably the place of hepaticas, and indeed I heard them called by that name.

I always associate our moving with blue hepaticas, for I carried a great basketful of them, which I had taken up roots and all, in the woods, the morning we set out; and what should I find under papa's study window but a great thicket of wild ferns and cornel bushes growingjust the place for my hepaticas, and I set them out before I went into the house.

I always associate our moving with blue hepaticas, for I carried a great basketful of them, which I had taken up roots and all, in the woods, the morning we set out; and what should I find under papa's study window but a great thicket of wild ferns and cornel bushes growingjust the place for my hepaticas, and I set them out before I went into the house.

I had been to the grave-yard to set out some fresh hepaticas on papa's grave.

Then many eyes watch for the opening of the May-flower, day by day, and a few for the Hepatica.

I know one such place for Hepatica a mile northeast,another for May-flower two miles southwest; and each year the whimsical creature is in bloom on that little spot, when not another flower can be found open through the whole country round.

There are certain localities, near by, where the Hepatica is all but white, and others where the May-flower is sumptuous in pink; yet it is not traceable to wet or dry, sun or shadow, and no agricultural chemistry can disclose the secret.

Is it by some Darwinian law of selection that the white Hepatica has utterly overpowered the blue, in our Cascade Woods, for instance, while yet in the very midst of this pale plantation a single clump will sometimes bloom with all heaven on its petals?

The Hepatica (called also Liverwort, Squirrel-Cup, or Blue Anemone) has been found in Worcester as early as March seventeenth, and in Danvers on March twelfth,dates which appear almost the extreme of credibility.

"And here are those which, if not daffodils, yet "'Come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty,'" he said, giving her a basket of hepaticas and winter-green.

" "Though you've certainly added a perfume to the violet," remarked Mr. Frederic Heath, with that sweetly lingering accent familiarly called the drawl, as he looked at the hepaticas.

The bright speeches are mostly genuine, made by Eddy Hopkins and Ned and Charley P. How came you to have blooming hepaticas?

First hepaticas in garden.

It has the same sort of stem that the hepatica has.

"What's yours, Ethel Blue?" "I know mine is hepatica.

So they dug up but a comparatively small number of the hepaticas, nor did they take many of the columbines nodding from a cleft in the piled-up rocks.

[Illustration: Heart-shaped Kidney-shaped] "The hepatica is kidney-shaped," remarked James.

When they go about half way to the midrib, as in the hepatica, it is 'lobed' and when they almost reach the midrib as they do in the poppy it is 'parted.'

Hepatica Hawks.

Anne Merriman Peck (A); 28Apr60; R256221. PEDERSON, ARTHUR S. Hepatica Hawks.

Anne Merriman Peck (A); 28Apr60; R256221. PEDERSON, ARTHUR S. Hepatica Hawks.

I look down the flaming crocus throatsthe imperial purple goblets with powdery gold stamensand at the modest little pink faces of the hepaticas.

It blooms in the months of February and March, and in that dreary season, in company with the Snow-drop, Crocus, and Hepaticas, will form a most delightful group of Flora's rich production.