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About the middle of the month, the green-house plants are ventured out: the rule is, the foliation of the common ash and the mulberry. This is a critical month for insects, especially the green fly or aphis family, and the caterpillars. Tobacco, limewater, and hand-picking, are the remedies.

The various species of meadow grass are in flower. The buttercup spreads over the meadows; the coleseed in corn fields; bryony, the arum, or cuckoo-pint, in hedges; the Tartarian honeysuckle, and the Corchorus Japonica, now show their flowers. Sweet violets still continue to shed their delicious odours.

O! to breathe

The nectared air of a clear morn in May,
Treading the gorgeous meadows.

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Towards the end of the month, that magnificent and beautiful tree, the horse-chestnut, displays its honours of fine green leaves, and its handsome spikes pyramidal' of white and red flowers: it is quite the glory of forest trees. The hawthorn (white and pink) is usually in blossom about the middle or end of the month. Again the merry month o' May

Has made our hills and valleys gay:
The birds rejoice in leafy bowers,
The bees hum round the breathing flowers:
Blithe morning lifts his rosy eye,

And evening's tears are tears of joy:
My soul, delightless, a' surveys,
While Willie's far frae Logan braes.

Within yon milk-white hawthorn bush,
Amang her nestlings, sits the thrush;
Her faithfu' mate will share her toil,
Or wi' his song her cares beguile:
But I, wi' my sweet nurslings here,
Nae mate to help, nae mate to cheer,
Pass widowed nights and joyless days,
While Willie's far frae Logan braes.

O wae upon you, men o' state,
That brethren rouse to deadly hate!
As ye make many a fond heart mourn,
Sae may it on your heads return!
How can your flinty hearts enjoy
The widow's tears, the orphan's cry?
But soon may peace bring happy days,
And Willie, hame to Logan braes!

BURNS.

The principal show of tulips takes place in this month (see T.T. for 1824, p. 158). The dazzling and gorgeous appearance of beds of tulips cannot fail to attract the notice of the most indifferent observer: some varieties of this elegant flower are very splen

did, and unrivalled for the beauty of their exquisite

colours.

Spring flowers are no longer

What spring flowers used to be;
Their fragrance and their beauty
Cannot give delight to me:
The cowslip and the primrose
And the violet are here-
Ah! why am I dejected

In the spring time of the year?
All seasons are delightful

In life's gay unclouded spring,-
We sport among the flowers

Like wild birds upon the wing:
But when life's bloom is over,
And no friendly smile is near,
Oh! dreary as December

Is the spring time of the year!

.T. H. BAYLEY.

Towards the end of the month, the Phalaena humuli, called by some the ghost moth, makes its appearance, and continues visible during the greater part of the month of June. The female glow-worm is now seen on dry banks, about woods, pastures, and hedgeways.-The angler is busily employed in this

month.

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The Thrasher, or Brown Thrush of America.-This bird (says Mr. Wilson, in that highly interesting work "The Ornithology of America') is a welcome visiter in Spring to every lover of rural scenery and rural song. In the months of April and May, when our woods, hedge-rows, orchards, and cherry-trees are one profusion of blossoms, when every object around conveys the sweet sensations of joy, and heaven's abundance is, as it were, showering around us, the grateful heart beats in unison with the varying elevated strains of this excellent bird: we listen to its notes with

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a kind of devotional ecstacy, as a morning hymn to the great and most adorable Creator of all.-Concerning the sagacity and reasoning faculty of this bird, my venerable friend, Mr. Bartram, writes me as follows: I remember to have reared one of these birds from the nest; which, when full grown, became very tame and docile. I frequently let him out of his cage, to give him a taste of liberty: after fluttering and dusting himself in dry sand and earth, and bathing, washing, and dressing himself, he would proceed to hunt insects, such as beetles, crickets, and other shelly tribes; but being very fond of wasps, after catching them and knocking them about to break their wings, he would lay them down, then examine if they had a sting, and with his bill squeeze the abdomen to clear it of the reservoir of poison, before he would swallow his prey. When in his cage, being very fond of dry crusts of bread, if upon trial the corners of the crumbs were too hard and sharp for his throat, he would throw them up, carry and put them in his water-dish to soften; then take them out and swallow them. Many other remarkable circumstances might be mentioned that would fully demonstrate faculties of mind; not only innate, but acquired ideas (derived from necessity in a state of domestication), which we call understanding and knowledge. We see that this bird could associate those ideas, arrange and apply them in a rational manner, according to circumstances. For instance, if he knew that it was the hard, sharp, corners of the crumb of bread that hurt his gullet, and prevented him from swallowing it, and that water would soften and render it easy to be swallowed, this knowledge must be acquired by observation and experience, or some other bird taught him. Here the bird perceived by the effect the cause, and then took the quickest, the most effectual, and agreeable method to remove that cause. What could the wisest man have done better? Call it reason, or instinct, it is the same that a sensible man would have done in this case. After the same manner this bird reasoned with respect to the wasps. He found, by experience and observation, that the first he attempted to swallow hurt his throat, and gave him extreme pain; and, upon examination, observed that the extremity of the abdomen was armed with a poisonous sting; and after this discovery never attempted to swallow a wasp until he first pinched his abdomen to the extremity, forcing out the sting with the receptacle of poison.

[From Darley's Silvia.]

Green haunts, and deep inquiring lanes,
Wind through the trunks their grassy trains;
Millions of chaplets curl unweft

From boughs, beseeching to be reft,
To prune the clustering of their groves,
And wreathe the brows that beauty loves.

Millions of blossoms, fruits, and gems,
Bend with rich weight the massy stems;
Millions of restless dizzy things,
With ruby tufts and rainbow wings,
Speckle the eye-refreshing shades,

Burn through the air, or swim the glades;
As if the tremulous leaves were tongues,
Millions of voices, sounds, and songs,
Breathe from the aching trees that sigh,
Near sick of their own melody.

Poetical Pictures in May and June.

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[From Robert Montgomery's Omnipresence of the Deity."]

Morning.

The Sun is seated on his ocean throne, Engirdled with his court of clouds. Around, Billows of damask and of orange light Evolving roll, as from a cauldron heaved;

While, from the midst, red bars of splendour shoot, And travel fiercely to the midway skies;

Then cowered awhile, they swell to wizard shapes,
Advance, and, like battalions in array,

Mingle their hues, and make a shining plain
Of crimson on the skies.

Beneath, the waves,

Shiv'ring and glassy, lie like ruffled scales
Of liquid steel; and, lo! awaking now,
With the white dews of slumber on her breast,
The Earth! all fragrant, fresh in living green,
And beautiful, as if this moment sprung
From out her Maker's hand. Athwart the trees
A brassy lustre shines; where matin beads,
Like drops of light, have diamonded the boughs;
And here and there some crisped and glossy stream,
Lit by a passing ray, laughs through the leaves.

The flowers are waking too, and ope their eyes
To greet the prying Sun, while meads and dales
With hoary incense steam; and, list!

The buzz of life! Myriads of insects now

Creep from their greenwood caves and mossy domes, And wind their way, to glitter in the sun;

While from yon hurdled hills the sheep-bells shake Their tinkling echoes down the bushy dale.

And is creation's heir, in sleepy calm, Unmindful of the morn! Ah! no; its beam Hath glanced upon the cottager's clean couch,

And called him up. And, see! the lattice oped
He spies along the landscape's glitt'ring view,
And looks to heav'n, and feels the toying breeze
Upheave his locks; and then angelic thoughts
Gush through his soul; instinctvely he owns
The presence of a GOD, and sends his heart
To Him, upon a sigh of artless love

And praise, because another day is born.

Poon.

The Sun hath waxed into his noontide wrath,
And 'fore his countenance the Earth lies scorched
In agonies of heat! The winds are dead!
The shallow lakes are filmed, and fetid pools
Battle upon the parched grounds; while flies
And insects, on the tumours of hot mud

Basking and buzzing creep. The trees stand still
Amid the air, and at their matted trunks

The ploughman lies, his head upon his palms;
While 'tween the spangled leaves the sheen of heaven
Gleams on him beauteously. The flowers are drooped,
As if they languish for a breezy draught;
And e'en the flirting bee, now honey-cloyed,
Is humming languid on the rose's brim!

The world grows faint; and all is stirless, save
Yon sky-bird trav'lling to the sun; and, hark!
Wing-poised, he peers undazzled at the blaze,
Hymning his heart-full of aerial strains.
Beneath this horrid cliff, behold the sea
Magnificently spread! The billows pant,
And revel in the beams that on their shoal
Of glassy crests dance sparklingly; or wild
Disporting wreathe the ocean's breast,
And gambol to the shore,-like cherub groups,
When on a glossy meadow-bank they leap,
And roll in gay contortions.

Far beyond,

Behold a rock majestically reared;"
Upon whose brow the eagle sits at noon,
Rolling his eye-balls at the blazing sun!
High on the yellow beach, its hoary side
Is bared unto the ocean, and the breeze
Upwafted, like a tight and stately sail,

When whitening in the glow of heaven. And, look!
The feathery forms of far-off sails are seen,
Alone upon the billows, or as clouds

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Dropped down upon the deep, and dancing on
The swell of waters.

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