There would be torrid, temperate and frigid zones but each might be as uniform and monotonous throughout the year as the tropical rain forests of equatorial Africa and South America now are. In a country such as ours, spring has a more dramatic meaning than the mere mechanics of the vernal equinox. It is not an abrupt break from winter into spring on March 21. Instead, it is regular orderly pageant with a multitude of actors dancing ahead of the sun on its northward march, a parade that stretches from subtropical Florida to the bleak north coast of Alaska. Snow and ice disappear.
Streams run full.
Wave after wave of migrating birds sweep northward to nest. Spring flowers push up and bloom in the warming woodlands, seeds sprout, and gardeners bend their backs to the spade. Down near the Ohio River, flowers come into bloom over a month earlier than the same kinds growing in our northern tier of counties. In the fifty mile length of Cook County there is fully ten days difference in flowering dates between its northern and southern borders. Each spring, for thirty years, the naturalists of the Forest Preserve District have carefully recorded scores of signs of spring.