SIGNS OF SPRING The approach of spring is felt, rather than reasoned about. There is that in us which rises to greet the incoming tide of the year before our eyes have apprised us of any change. Winter lies over the world much as ashes are banked on coals for the night, which nevertheless retain their heat and will be found alive and glowing in the morning. In the tropics the fire is not banked and there is no cold dawn with anticipations of the kindly blaze soon to arise, no gradual uncovering of the cheerful coals. Here in New England the dawn is rigorous and spring more welcome. The winter buds are evidence that it is not far away, and it takes but the least encouragement at any time for this latent heat and life to awake and show itself in the high blueberry twigs. Such buoyant faith has the skunk-cabbage it never entirely loses sight of spring, but exerts some spell over its muddy bed, whereby you may see that there, at least, it has already come in November. The reddening of the twigs is in effect a prelude, and precedes the real spring as dawn precedes daylight, or twilight the night; this is the dawn of the year and these blueberry twigs its first flush. Smilax turns suddenly green as the sap circulates in its spiny stems, and the brown and sear aspect of the earth is relieved and enlivened. This early green is as refreshing to the eye as the first rhubarb to the palate. One of the earliest signs is the little rosette of bright-colored leaves on the smaller hair-cap mosses, growing in contact with an outcropping ledge. You may see whole patches in the pastures, varying from orange to deep red, a vivid bit of color next the brown earth and looking like diminutive blossoms. Then come the fruiting spikes of the common field horsetails, poking out of some sand-bank. These signs of the awakening season appeal to the trained eye rather than to the casual glance. Such an one detects the slightest swelling of a leaf-bud, the faint reddening of a twig, the deeper green of another. The sap dripping from the freshly cut limb of a birch, or pendent from the wound in a long glittering icicle, is evidence of the quickened circulation of the earth. Among the thick mat of dry leaves you may perhaps find the delicate shoots of wood anemones, and in the swamps the tightly rolled stipes of the osmunda, like little croziers, while there is ice yet in the leaves of the pitcher-plant.