The pleasant night-sounds are begun; the hylas are
uttering their shrill _peep_ from the meadows, mingled soon with hoarser
toads, who take to the water at this season to deposit their spawn. The
tree-toads soon join them; but one listens in vain for bullfrogs, or
katydids, or grasshoppers, or whippoorwills, or crickets: we must wait
for them until the delicious June.
The earliest familiar token of the coming season is the expansion of the
stiff catkins of the alder into soft, drooping tresses. These are so
sensitive, that, if you pluck them at almost any time during the winter,
a day's bright sunshine will make them open in a glass of water, and
thus they eagerly yield to every moment of April warmth. The blossom
of the birch is more delicate, that of the willow more showy, but the
alders come first. They cluster and dance everywhere upon the bare
boughs above the watercourses; the blackness of the buds is softened
into rich brown and yellow; and as this graceful creature thus comes
waving into the spring, it is pleasant to remember that the Norse Eddas
fabled the first woman to have been named Embla, because she was created
from an alder-bough.
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