numerous flowers opening on every side. The trees put on all their verdure; the hedges are rich in fragrance from the snowy blossoms of the hawthorn; and the orchards display their highest beauty in the delicate blush of the apple-blossoms.

From the moist meadow to the wither'd hill,
Led by the breeze, the vivid verdure runs,
And swells, and deepens, to the cherish'd eye.
The hawthorn whitens; and the juicy groves
Put forth their buds, unfolding by degrees,
Till the whole leafy forest stands display'd
In full luxuriance.

THOMSON.

All this scene of beauty and fertility is, however, sometimes dreadfully ravaged by the blights which peculiarly occur in this month. The mischief seems to be done chiefly by innumerable swarms of very small insects, which are brought by the north-east winds :—

If brush'd from Russian wilds, a cutting gale
Rise not, and scatter from his humid wings
The clammy mildew; or, dry blowing, breathe
Untimely frosts; before whose baleful blast

The full-blown Spring through all her foliage shrinks,
Joyless and dead, a wide dejected waste.
For oft, engender'd by the hazy north,

Myriads on myriads, insect armies waft

Keen in the poison'd breeze; and wasteful eat,
Through buds and bark, into the blacken'd core
Their eager way.

THOMSON.

A cold and windy May is, however, accounted favourable to the corn; which, if brought forward by early warm weather, is apt to run into stalk, while its ears remain thin and light.

A cold May, and a windy,

Makes a fat barn and a findy,

says the old adage.

The first of May is the general time for turning out cattle into the pastures, though frequently then bare of grass. very The milk soon becomes more copious, and of finer quality, from the juices in the young grass; and it is in this month that the making of cheeses is usually begun in the dairies.

The gardens now yield an agreeable, though immature product, in the young gooseberries and currants, which are highly acceptable to our tables, now almost exhausted of their store of preserved fruits.

The woodman is now busily employed in fell

ing and barking trees, and many a monarch of the forest, whose gnarled stem has, for years, braved the "summer's heat and winter's cold," bends beneath his resistless axe:

Each hedge is covered thick with green,
And where the hedger late hath been,
Young tender shoots begin to grow,
From out the mossy stumps below.
But woodmen still on Spring intrude,
And thin the shadow's solitude,
With sharpen'd axes felling down,
The oak-trees budding into brown;
Which, as they crash upon the ground,
A crowd of labourers gather round,
These mixing 'mong the shadows dark,
Rip off the crackling, staining bark;
Depriving yearly, when they come,
The green woodpecker of his home;
Who early in the Spring began,
Far from the sight of troubling man,
To bore his round holes in each tree,
In fancy's sweet security;

Now startled by the woodman's noise,
He wakes from all his dreary joys.

CLARE.

The leafing of trees is commonly completed in this month. It begins with the aquatic kinds,

such as the willow, poplar, and alder; and ends

with the oak, beech, and ash. These are sometimes very bare of foliage even at the close of May.

Leigh Hunt gives us a little Claude-like picture of a May morning, clear and bright as its subject :

The sun is up and 'tis a morn of May

Round old Ravenna's clear-shown towers and bay-
A morn, the loveliest which the year
has seen,
Last of the Spring, yet fresh with all its green;
For a warm eve and gentle rains at night,
Have left a sparkling welcome for the light;
And there's a crystal clearness all about;
The leaves are sharp, the distant hills look out,
A balmy briskness comes upon the breeze,
The smoke goes dancing from the cottage trees;
And when you listen you may hear a coil
Of bubbling springs about the grassy soil;
And all the scene, in short-sky, earth, and sea,
Breathes like a bright-eyed face that laughs out
LEIGH HUNT.

openly.

Among the numerous wild flowers which now adorn the fields and copses, none attracts more notice than the cowslip

Whose bashful flowers,

Declining, hide their beauty from the sun,
Nor give their spotted bosoms to the gaze,
Of hasty passenger.

On hedge-banks, the wild germander is conspicuous; this pretty wilding seems to be a special favourite of the Corn Law Rhymer. In one place he describes it as

Brighter than the bright Heaven the speedwell blue;

and elsewhere speaks of it

Again a child, where childhood roved, I run,
While groups of speedwell with their bright blue eyes,
Like happy children, cluster in the sun.

ELLIOTT.

The whole surface of the meadows is often covered with the yellow crowfoot. These flowers are also called buttercups, and are supposed, by some, to give the butter its rich yellow tinge at this season. This notion is erroneous, however, as the cows will not touch it, on account of its acrid taste. The violet still lingers at the foot of the hedges. What a picture of "solemn repose," of silent desert-like solitude, is conveyed in the lines of the most gifted of American poets in describing the habitat of this sweet flower :—

I know where the young May violet grows
In its lone and lowly nook,