The Spring of the Year

THE SPRING OF THE YEAR DALLAS LORE SHARP
SPRING OF THE YEAR—SHADBUSH (CHAPTER I)
The Dallas Lore Sharp Nature Series
BY DALLAS LORE SHARP AUTHOR OF “THE LAY OF THE LAND,” “THE FACE OF THE FIELDS,” “THE FALL OF THE YEAR,” “WINTER,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY ROBERT BRUCE HORSFALL
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1904, 1905, AND 1906, BY THE CHAPPLE PUBLISHING CO., LTD. COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS BOOK COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1908, 1911, AND 1912, BY DALLAS LORE SHARP COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A
TO MY SISTER JENNIE THE BEST OF COMPANIONS IN THE WOODS AND FIELDS THROUGH WHICH WE WENT TO SCHOOL
It has been my aim in the thirty-nine chapters of the three books in this series to carry my readers through the weeks of all the school year, not however as with a calendar, for that would be more or less wooden and artificial; but by readings, rather, that catch in a large way the spirit of the particular season, that give something definite and specific in the way of suggestions for tramps afield with things to look for and hear and do. Naturally many of the birds and animals and flowers mentioned, as well as woods and aspects of sky and field, are those of my own local environment—of my New England surrounding—and so must differ in some details from those surrounding you in your far Southern home or you on your distant Pacific coast, or you in your rich and varied valley of the Mississippi, or you on your wide and generous prairie. But the similarities and correspondences, the things and conditions we have in common, are more than our differences. Our sun, moon, sky, earth—our land—are the same, our love for this beautiful world is the same, as is that touch of nature which we all feel and which makes us all kin. Wherever, then, in these books of the seasons, the things treated differ from the things around you, read about those things for information, and in your journeys afield fill in the gaps with whatever it is that completes your landscape, or rounds out your cycle of the seasons, or links up your endless chain of life.