hives about the middle of this month. As their food is the honey-like juice found in the tubes of flowers, their coming abroad is a certain sign that flowers are now to be met with. No creature seems possessed of a greater power of foreseeing the weather; so that their appearance in the morning, may be reckoned a sure token of a fair day.

The gardens are now rendered gay by the crocuses, which adorn the borders with a rich mixture of the brightest yellow and purple. The little shrubs of mezereon are in their beauty. The fields look green with the springing grass, but few wild flowers as yet appear to decorate the ground. Daisies, however, begin to be sprinkled over the dry pastures; and the moist banks of ditches are enlivened with the glossy star-like yellow flowers of pilewort. Towards the end of the month, primroses peep out beneath the hedges; and the most delightfully fragrant of all flowers, the violet, discovers itself by the perfume it imparts to the surrounding air, before the eye has perceived it in its lowly bed. SHAKSPEARE compares an exquisitely sweet strain of music, to the delicious scent of this flower.

O! it came o'er my ear, like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.

There are several kinds of violets, but the fragrant (both blue and white) is the earliest, thence

с

called the March violet. To these flowers SHAKSPEARE adds the daffodil,

Which comes before the swallow dares, and takes
The winds of March with beauty.

Besides the hazel, the fallow now enlivens the hedges with its catkins full of yellow dust, and the alder-trees are covered with a kind of black bunches, which are the male and female flowers. The leaves of honeysuckles are nearly expanded. In the gardens, the peach and nectarine, the almond, the cherry and apricot-trees, come into full bud during this month. The gardeners find plenty of employment in pruning trees, digging and manuring beds, and sowing a great variety of seeds, both for the flower and kitchen garden.

In the latter part of this month the equinox happens, when day and night are of equal length all over the globe: or rather, when the sun is an equal time above, and below, the horizon. For the morning and evening twilight make apparent day considerably longer than night. This takes place again in September. The first is called the vernal, the latter, the autumnal equinox. At these times storms and tempests are particularly frequent, whence they have always been the terror of mariners. March winds are boisterous and vehement to a proverb.

APRIL.

Now daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver white,
And cuckow-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight;
The cuckow now on every tree
Sings cuckoo---cuckoo.

APRIL weather is become a proverbial expression for a mixture of the bright and gloomy. The pleasantness of its sunshiny days, with the delightful view of fresh greens and newly-opened flowers, is unequalled; but they are frequently overcast with clouds, and chilled with rough wintry blasts

Her face was like an April morn,
Clad in a wintry cloud;

says the beautiful balled of Margaret's Ghost.

This month gives the most perfect image of Spring; for its vicissitudes of warm gleams of sunshine, and gentle showers, have the most powerful effects in hastening that universal springing of the vegetable tribes, from whence the season generally derives its appellation.

April generally begins with raw unpleasant weather, the influence of the equinoctial storms still in

some degree prevailing. Its opening is thus described in a poem of Mr. WARTON'S :

Mindful of disaster past,

And shrinking at the northern blast,
The sleety storm returning still,

The morning hoar, the evening chill;
Reluctant comes the timid Spring.
Scarce a bee, with airy ring,

Murmurs the blossom'd boughs around
That clothe the garden's southern bound:

Scarce a sickly straggling flower

Decks the rough castle's rifted tower:

Scarce the hardy primrose peeps

From the dark dell's entangled steeps.

Fringing the forest's devious edge
Half rob'd appears the hawthorn hedge;
Or to the distant eye displays

Weakly green its budding sprays.

Early in the month, that welcome guest and harbinger of Summer, the swallow, returns. The kind first seen, is the chimney or house swallow, known by its long forked tail, and red breast: At first, here and there only one appears, glancing quick by us, as if scarcely able to endure the cold.

The swallow, for a moment seen,
Skims in haste the village green.

But in a few days, their number is much increased, and they sport with seeming pleasure in the warm sunshine.

And see, my Delia, see o'er yonder stream,
Where on the sunny bank the lambkins play,
Alike attracted to th' enlivening gleam,

The stranger swallows take their wonted way.

JAGO.

As these birds live on insects, their appearance is a certain proof that some of this minute tribe of animals are now got abroad from theirWinter retreats.

The birds are now busied in pairing, and building their nests. As their singing is the voice of courtship and conjugal love, the concerts of the groves begin to fill with all their various melody. The nightingale, that most accomplished and enchanting of songsters, is heard soon after the arrival of the swallow. He sings by day as well as by night; but in the day time, his voice is drowned in the multitude of performers; in the evening it is heard alone; whence the poets have always made the song of the nightingale a nocturnal serenade—

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly,
Most musical, most melancholy!

The chauntress, oft, the woods among

I woo to hear thy even-song.

MILTON.

Another of the most striking events of this month, is the renewal of the cuckow's note, which is generally heard about the middle of April. This is so remarkable a circumstance, that it has commanded attention in all countries; and several rustic sayings,