Vernal

For as a vernall Larke, but lately drest / In her first Downe, abandoning her nest, / Stretchest her pinions, her small force assayes / Flutters, and fals before her flight shee raise, [...]

To my requeſt this anſwer ſhe bequeath'd, / Whiles from her lips the vernall Roſes breath'd; [...]

[...] I have in England for ſome years paſt, kept by me an exact table, or Ephemeris both of the Vernall, and Summer Eteſians; but found the VVinds no leſſe Variable in thoſe Months, then at other Seaſons.

Look round: the vernal fields smile with new flowers, / The budding orchard perfumes the soft breeze, / And the green corn waves to the passing gale.

Their [aphids'] punctures of the leaves of peach and nectarine trees in the vernal months; and of cherry, plum, and currant-trees in the summer, produce a swelling and elevation of the cuticle of the leaf on its upper side, and consequent curling of it with its upper surface outwards, which terminates in a destruction of it, [...]

On we went in this way, mile after mile, over hills and through valleys inundated with a frothing, vernal vegetation and filled with the odour of newly watered ferns in a glasshouse.

Something about the hoot of the vessel entering the river, made George Smith shiver. Two weeks of rain storm and hurricane. For three days Miss Martin could not get to work because of flooding in the subway. And suddenly it stopped. Sun up, clear sky, air fresh, all vernal on the first day of May.

A religious problem unexpectedly triggered the invention of modern science. [...] According to the Julian calendar, the first day of spring (the vernal equinox, when the hours of day exactly equaled those of night) should occur around 21 March. By the fifteenth century, the vernal equinox fell in early April. The church feared that this delay jeopardized the sanctity of Easter (which was celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox). The Counter-Reformation papacy, eager to have its structures improved and reformed, called on intellectuals to come up with both an explanation about the Julian calendar's errors and a solution.