seen larks and rooks come flying off the sea; not in one year only, but in many; not on one day only in the same year, but on several. I have seen them coming off the sea for many hours in the same day: the larks from five and ten, to forty or fifty in a flock; the rooks, on the same day, in companies from three to fifteen. This I once observed in November for three days in succession; the early part of this month being the general time of their coming our fields were then covered with the larks, to the great destruction of the late-sown wheat. They generally remained with us till the first heavy fall of snow, and then disappeared. Early in the February following, they appeared again on the coast in innumerable flocks, but disappeared as soon as the weather became fine, with a light westerly wind: from which circumstance I concluded that they again crossed the sea. They appeared to me to be the same as our common sky-larks.'-Linn. Trans., vol. xv, part i, p. 22.

The fields and inclosures are now cleared of their harvest treasure, and the web of the gossamer extends in unbroken and floating pathway, over stubble and lea. Vegetation is every where passing rapidly into decay;—and the painful reflection assails us that we cannot,

When summer hours are fled,

To the poor leaf that's fall'n and dead,

Bring back the hue it wore, the scent it shed.

In mild seasons, some of the flowers named in October continue in blow this month: and on fine, bright days, which 'like angels' visits' sometimes occur in November, various insects may be seen sporting in the brief intervals of sunshine.

To an INSECT, fluttering about on a fine Winter's Day.

Child of Summer, on the wing

In bleak November's gloomy reign,
Deem'st thou so soon the balmy spring
Hath visited the earth again?

Short slumb'ring in thy torpid nook,

The sun awakens thee too soon-
Awhile to flutter on the brook,

Awhile to sport amid the noon.
Trust not this fleeting golden beam,
This genial sky and softened air;
For death will glaze the sparkling stream,
And stretch thee cold and stiffened there.
Thou silly fool! where are the flowers,
The balsam-dust thou fed upon?
The music of the twilight bowers?

Dost thou not see how all are gone?
The sunbeam smiles! enough for thee
The transient bliss its radiance lends;
Thou dost not feel, thou dost not see,
The gloomy future that impends!

Stray Leaves.

The Virginia-creeper has now a very rich and beautiful appearance. Mushrooms are collected in abundance this month: see two papers on the Fungi, by MR. A. KERR YOUNG, in our last volume, pp. 361, 392, and Dr. Drummond's First Steps to Botany, Second Edition. Moles now make their nests, where they lodge during the winter, and which are ready for depositing their young in the spring. On the last day of the month, in some parts of Sussex, it is customary for the young men and boys to go into the woods hunting squirrels, and picking up dormice; and what they take alive they carry round to houses and the adjacent market to sell.

The Last of Autumn.

Among our notices for this month, we must not omit to introduce to our readers some extracts from a beautiful descriptive poem by JOHN CLARE, printed at the end of a volume entitled The Shepherd's Calendar, and other Poems'-a book which should be purchased by every admirer of native, untaught bardsand of faithful and poetical descriptions of the varied beauties of English rural scenery.

Come, bleak NOVEMBER, in thy wildness come:

Thy mornings clothed in rime, thy evenings chill;
E'en these have power to tempt me from my home,
E'en these have beauty to delight me still.

Though Nature lingers in her mourning weeds,
And wails the dying year in gusty blast,
Still added beauty to the last proceeds,

And wildness triumphs when her bloom is past.
Though long grass all the day is drenched in dew,
And splashy pathways lead me o'er the greens;
Though naked fields hang lonely on the view,
Long lost to harvest and its busy scenes;
Yet in the distance shines the painted bough,
Leaves changed to ev'ry colour ere they die,
And through the valley rivers widen now,
Once little brooks which summer dribbled dry.

Those yellow leaves that litter on the grass, 'Mong dry brown stalks that lately blossomed there, Instil a mournful pleasure as they pass:

For melancholy has its joy to spare,

A joy that dwells in AUTUMN's lonely walks,
And whispers, like a vision, what shall be,
How flowers shall blossom on those withered stalks,
And green leaves clothe each nearly naked tree.

Oft in the woods I hear the thund'ring gun;
And, through the brambles as I cautious creep,
A bustling hare, the threat'ning sound to shun,
Oft skips the pathway in a fearful leap;
And spangled pheasant, scared from stumpy bush,
Oft blunders rustling through the yellow boughs;
While farther off, from beds of reed and rush,
The startled woodcock leaves its silent sloughs.

Here Echo oft her Autumn ditty sings,

Mocking the cracking whip and yelping hounds, While through the woods the wild disorder rings, Chorussed with hunters' horns of mellower sounds, And bawling halloos of the sporting train,

Who dash through woodlands, in their gay parade, And leap the ditch, and sweep the level plain, Fresh wildness adding to the chequered shade.

The timid sheep that huddled from the wind
'Neath the broad oaks, beside the spinney rails,
Half mad with fear such hue and cry to find,
In rattling motion chase adown the vales:
And, falsely startled by unheeding dogs,

From where the acorns patter bright and brown, Through the thorn hedges burst the random hogs, Who grunt and scamper till they reach the town.

To meanest trifles Pleasure's hold will cling;
'Tis even felt to view that greening moss;
These simple wrecks of summer and of spring-
Like other children I regret their loss.

But there is something in that wind that mourns,
And those black clouds that hide the heav'n as well,
And in that sun, that gilds and glooms by turns,
Which leaves a pleasure that's unspeakable.

*

Amidst the wreck of perishable leaves,
How fresh and fine appears the evergreen!
How box, or holly, garden-walks relieves!
How bright the ivy round the oak is seen!
And on old thorns the long-leaved mistletoe
Regains fresh beauties as its parent dies;
While dark spurge-laurel, on the banks below,
In stubborn bloom the Autumn blight defies.
But garden shades have long been doomed to fall,
Where naked fruit-trees drop their constant show'rs:
All blooms are fled, save on the wet mossed wall
As yet may peep some faded gilliflowers.
The mist and smoke, in shadows mingling deep,
Around each cottage hover all the day;
Through the dim panes the prisoned children peep,
And look in vain for summer and for play.

Town Green-houses.

Town green-houses are generally on a small scale, and seldom accompanied by sheds for potting and shifting, stocks of mould, and a platform for setting out the plants in summer: if they were, it is probable these adjuncts would be of very little use, for no green-house plant will ever thrive in a town where fossil coal is generally consumed. All that can be said with advantage on town green-houses might be comprised in very few words: viz. that the only way to have them look well is to agree with a nurseryman to keep up a supply of verdant flowering plants for such a part of the year as the family is in town. We are confident there is no other mode that will be attended with success, till the nature of plants or the nature of a coal fire is considerably altered. Anum

ber of London green-houses placed behind the houses on the tops of kitchens and other offices, and of plant cabinets communicating with living-rooms, are maintained in order by nurserymen in this way; and a number also are kept in order, as it is called, by jobbing gardeners, who call occasionally to see that the plants are properly watered, who supply pots of mignionette, and who shift the plants in spring, and prune them in autumn. But the green-houses managed in the latter mode are wretched vegetable abodes,―hospitals or pest-houses of plants; and to any person who knows what a green, healthy plant is, they are deformities rather than ornaments.

Another mode in which green-houses in the metropolis are sometimes managed, is as follows: The occupier of the London house has a villa within 15 or 20 miles of town, where he has a green-house, or grapery and green-house combined, with pits and hotbeds, and keeps a gardener. From the country, weekly supplies of vegetables, butter, eggs, fowls, cream, and pots of forced articles, are obtained, and faded flowers and sickly green-house plants returned. This is certainly the proudest and most gratifying mode of all; but yet, as far as the green-house is concerned, it is attended with less show than where a nurseryman of extensive practice in the culture of plants in pots is employed. Such a nurseryman has four grand sources of disposing of plants in flower, besides his ordinary chance-buyers and private custom: first, he sells to the hawkers; next, he can send to Coventgarden market by cart-loads; thirdly, he supplies green-houses by the month or year; and lastly, he supplies routs. He is never, therefore, without a large stock in hand; and in order to make the most of these, he first tries them at market when they are barely coming into flower, which state suits the shopkeepers, who buy to keep them a week or two to sell again. If he fails there, the hawkers come to him every morning, and see what bargains he has got; and