"But now for another picture. The hounds are in full cry after a hare which has been just started from the wood, and a score of well-mounted horsemen are scampering after the dogs. One horse with his rider plunges into the brook, another falls in leaping a gate, a third rolls down a bank into a ditch of nettles. Poor puss has gained the opposite hill, but a couple of dogs are but a few yards behind her. All is hurry and confusion; and the crashing of the hedges, the wild cry of the dogs, and the hallooing of the huntsmen add to the confusion."

"I hope poor puss will escape after all. I wish it was a fox and not a hare that the dogs were after. How he would scamper across the fields! I wish I could remember all the odd names of the fields you told me of. There was Copsy Turf, and Wood-side, and Shoulder-of-mutton Field, and Parson's Paddock, and Knolly Croft, and Broomy Hill, and Spout Meadow, and Robin Hood's Close, and a great many more."

"You have not mentioned Twenty Acres, Polehurst Slip, Brook Mead, nor Bushy Scrubs; and you have forgotten Mill Hoppet, Little Go, Stony End, Great Hide, Abbotsbury, Flamstead Mead, and several others. Have you been in the woods when the men were felling timber?-a busy scene it is; but here is a winter picture for you in the woods.

The leaves have fallen from the forest trees, and their naked branches are all covered with snow. The squirrel has hid himself in his nest; the fox has retired to his hole in the

earth. Not a bird is seen above; not a fieldmouse below. No, not so much as a fly or a spider. All is still, cold, and cheerless: snow on the trees-snow on the groundsnow everywhere!"

"Oh, what a picture! It is almost enough to make me blow my fingers with cold. Do give me a picture with some life in itplease do."

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Well, then, here is one that perhaps will suit you better. A squirrel is frisking and playing on the grass at the edge of the wood. Ah! he sees us, and is off more nimbly than a lamp-lighter. There he goes up the trunk of an oak-tree. Now he is among the branches; now he springs through the air, with his bushy tail spreading behind him; and now he is chattering at the very top of a pine-tree.

"It is of no use to try to catch him. He must be the best climber in the world."

"If you were to catch him you could not make him happier; so it would be better to let him alone.

"The pretty red squirrel lives up in a tree,

A little blithe creature as ever can be:

He dwells in the boughs where the stock-dove broods,
Far in the shades of the green summer woods;

His food is the young juicy cone of the pine,

And the milky beech nut is his milk and his wine.
In the joy of his nature he frisks with a bound

To the topmost twigs, and then down to the ground;
Then up again, like a winged thing,

And from tree to tree with a vaulting spring;
Then he sits up aloft, and looks roguish and queer,
As if he would say, Ay, follow me here!'

And then he grows fretful, and stamps his foot,
And then independently cracks his nut.'"

"That is something like a picture! The

M

little nimble-footed fellow has some life in him. He has changed winter into summer all at once. I like the wood in the daytime, but it would not suit me at all at night."

"There are two pretty creatures that render the wood, even at night, very interesting: one is the glowworm, that lights up a lamp on the grass; and the other is the nightingale, that cheers the gloom with a harmonious song.

'When gathering shades the landscape veil,
The peasants seek their village dale,
And mists from river-wave arise,
And dew in every blossom lies.

When evening's primrose opes to shed
Soft fragrance round her grassy bed;
When glowworms in the wood-walk light
Their lamp to cheer the traveller's sight;-

At that calm hour, so still, so pale,
Awakes the lonely nightingale;
And from a hermitage of shades

Fills with her voice the forest glades.''

"When I walk in the woods at night, I hope the glowworm and the nightingale will both be there. I shall want all the light that the one can give me, and the louder and the longer the other sings the better."

A young orchard-An old orchard of crooked and moss-grown trees-Moss the general livery of Nature-Poor Preece and his apple-gathering with a long pole-Solomon's orchards and possessions-Good fruit.

"IN my walk this morning, Edwin, I passed by a young orchard. The ground seemed so neat and trim, and the trees so young, low, thin, and straight, that it hardly looked like an orchard to me. It seemed more like a garden of good-sized gooseberry bushes than anything else. To be sure, everything must