There were peach-blossoms, too, and the yellow jasmine was opening its multitudinous buds, climbing over tall trees, and waving from bough to bough.

There were fresh young ferns and white bloodroot in the edges of woods, matched by snowdrops in the garden, beneath budded myrtle and _Petisporum_.

In this wilderness the birds were busy; the two main songsters being the mocking-bird and the cardinal-grosbeak, which monopolized all the parts of our more varied Northern orchestra save the tender and liquid notes, which in South Carolina seemed unattempted except by some stray blue-bird.

Jays were as loud and busy as at the North in autumn; there were sparrows and wrens; and sometimes I noticed the shy and whimsical chewink.
From this early spring-time onward, there seemed no great difference in atmospheric sensations, and only a succession of bloom.

After two months one's notions of the season grew bewildered, just as very early rising bewilders the day.