3-052-483 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Months: March, 1880. 'Throughout the stormy month we have now entered we seem constantly on the threshold of spring, and as often lapsing again into winter. One day the earth smiles greenly, and the blue sky and welcome sunshine set us thinking of country lanes, of ox-lips and nodding violets, and of the banks where the wild thyme blows. But on the next our hopes are rudely dashed aside. We look up in vain for a patch of blue in the heavens, and, pulling our overcoats about our ears, try to shut out if possible the howling blasts of wind...But the winds of March - spite of their seeming cruelty to shrubs and trees, and their tendency, as Shakspeare beautifully expresses it, to "check all our buds from blowing"- are as necessary to the soil as the sunshine of summer...Foremost among the adventurous wildings of the month are the violets, that, "gleaming like amethysts in the dewy moss," fill the air of our woods and grassy lane-sides with their delicious perfume. In sheltered places, in the shade of some secluded grove or mossy bank, the primrose may be found unfolding its pale yellow petals'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.