Radcliffe, which daily defies Providence by schooling women away from beneficent ignorance, gave the Natural Order another kick in the pants yesterday by holding a spring fertility rite some two months before the beginning of winter.

If everything had gone according to the little-publicized plan, by the end of the day pinwheeling troops of girls would have planted 2000 bulbs of various denominations in shrub-beds around the Quad. It was supposed to be the first major step in a long-range scheme to re-decorate the Radcliffe greensward.

It wasn't.

Only six or eight girls and a few little dogs and stray children collected at the Radcliffe Field House behind Holmes Hall. There they heard Diane K. McGuire, landscape-architect for the entire project, speak of deep-planted daffodils, tulips with predictably Dutch names, and blue chinadoxes which bloom, T.S. Eliot notwithstanding, in earliest April. With spoons and spades they went off to scratch the ground.

"Ho, ho," said one of the little boys, the black strings of his ski parka drawn up against the chill of mid-morning. "Where are you burying yours?"

His young companion, whose hack-work with a soup spoon marked him as so: "Does it matter if you plant them up-side down?"

His friend just rummaged among the dead leaves.

The bulbs left above ground after yesterday's festival will be planted later by hired gardeners or interested students. Students who would domesticate the flowers and put them indoors in pots can get bulbs from Mrs. McGuire.

The two thousand bulbs were given to the 'Cliffe by Maurice Freeman, a friend of President Bunting.