The approach of spring in our city parks is marked by the appearance of the Dandelion gatherers. It is always interesting to see, in May, on the closely guarded lawns and field expanses of our city parks, the hundreds of bareheaded, gayly-dressed Italian and Portuguese women and children eagerly gathering the young Dandelion plants to add to their meagre fare as a greatly-loved delicacy. They collect these "greens" in highly-colored kerchiefs, in baskets, in squares of sheeting; I have seen the women bearing off a half-bushel of plants; even their stumpy little children are impressed to increase the welcome harvest, and with a broken knife dig eagerly in the greensward. The thrifty park commissioners, in Dandelion-time, relax their rigid rules, "Keep Off the Grass," and turn the salad-loving Italians loose to improve the public lawns by freeing them from weeds. The earliest sign of spring in the fields and woods in my childhood was the appearance of the Willow catkins, and was heralded by the cry of one child to another,--"Pussy-willows are out." How eagerly did those who loved the woods and fields turn, after the storm, whiteness, and chill of a New England winter, to Pussy-willows as a promise of summer and sunshine. Some of their charm ever lingers to us as we see them in the baskets of swarthy street venders in New York. Magnolia blossoms are sold in our city streets to remind city dwellers of spring. "Every flower its own bow-kwet," is the call of the vender. Bunches of Locust blossoms follow, awkwardly tied together. Though the Magnolia is earlier, I do not find it much more splendid as a flowering tree for the garden than our northern Dogwood; and the Dogwood when in bloom seems just as tropical. It is then the glory of the landscape; and its radiant starry blossoms turn into ideal beauty even our sombre cemeteries. The Magnolia has been planted in northern gardens for over a century. Gardens on Long Island have many beautiful old specimens, doubtless furnished by the Prince Nurseries. These seem thoroughly at home; just as does the Locust brought from Virginia, a century ago, by one Captain Sands of Sands Point, to please his Virginia bride with the presence of the trees of her girlhood's home. These Locusts have spread over every rood of Long Island earth, and seem as much at home as Birch or Willow. The three Magnolia trees on Mr. Brown's lawn in Flatbush are as large as any I know in the North, and were exceptionally full of bloom this year, this photograph (shown facing page 148) being taken when they were past their prime. I saw children eagerly gathering the waxy petals which had fallen, and which show so plainly in the picture. But the flower is not common enough here for northern children to learn the varied attractions of the Magnolia.