We all have flower favorites, and some of us have flower antipathies, or at least we are indifferent to certain flowers; but I never knew any one but loved the Daffodil. Not only have poets and dramatists sung it, but it is a common favorite, as shown by its homely names in our everyday speech. I am always touched in _Endymion_ that the only flowers named as "a thing of beauty that is a joy forever" are Daffodils "with the green world they live in." In Daffodils I like the "old fat-headed sort with nutmeg and cinnamon smell and old common English names--Butter-and-eggs, Codlins-and-cream, Bacon and eggs." The newer ones are more slender in bud and bloom, more trumpet-shaped, and are commonplace of name instead of common. In Virginia the name of a variety has become applied to a family, and all Daffodils are called Butter-and-eggs by the people. On spring mornings the Tulips fairly burn with a warmth, which makes them doubly welcome after winter. Emerson--ever able to draw a picture in two lines--to show the heart of everything in a single sentence--thus paints them:-- "The gardens fire with a joyful blaze Of Tulips in the morning's rays." "Tulipase do carry so stately and delightful a form, and do abide so long in their bravery, that there is no Lady or Gentleman of any worth that is not caught with this delight,"--wrote the old herbalist Parkinson. Bravery is an ideal expression for Tulips. [Illustration: Lilacs in Midsummer in Garden of Mrs. Abraham Lansing, Albany, New York.] It is with something of a shock that we read the words of Philip Hamerton in _The Sylvan Year_, that nature is not harmonious in the spring, but is only in the way of becoming so. He calls it the time of crudities, like the adolescence of the mind. He says, "The green is good for us, and we welcome it with uncritical gladness; but when we think of painting, it may be doubted whether any season of the year is less propitious to the broad and noble harmonies which are the secrets of all grand effects in art." And he compares the season to the uncomfortable hour in a household when the early risers are walking about, not knowing what to do with themselves, while others have not yet come down to breakfast. I must confess that an undiversified country landscape in spring has upon me the effect asserted by Hamerton. I recall one early spring week in the Catskills, when I fairly complained, "Everything is so green here." I longed for rocks, water, burnt fields, bare trees, anything to break that glimmering green of new grass and new Birches. But in the spring garden there is variety of shape and color; the Peony leaf buds are red, some sprouting leaves are pink, and there are vast varieties of brown and gray and gold in leaf. Let me give the procession of spring in the garden in the words of a lover of old New England flowers, Dr. Holmes. It is a vivid word picture of the distinctive forms and colors of budding flowers and leaves.