Through the dumb mead. Distressful Nature pants.
The very streams look languid from afar ;

Or, through th' unsheltered glade, impatient, seem
To hurl into the covert of the grove,

AFTERNOON.

The Sun has lost his rage! His downward orb
Shoots nothing now but animating warmth,
And vital lustre; that, with various ray,

Lights up the clouds, those beauteous robes of heaven,
Incessant rolled into romantic shapes,

The dream of waking Fancy! Broad below,
Covered with ripening fruits, and swelling fast
Into the perfect year, the pregnant earth
And all her tribes rejoice. Now the soft hour
Of walking comes; for him who lonely loves
To seek the distant hills, and there converse
With Nature.

EVENING.

Low walks the Sun, and broadens by degrees,
Just o'er the verge of day. The shifting clouds
Assembled gay, a richly-gorgeous train,
In all their pomp attend his setting throne.
Air, earth, and ocean, smile immense. And now,
As if his weary chariot sought the bowers.
Of Amphitrite and her tending nymphs,
(So Grecian fable sung) he dips his orb;
Now half immersed; and now a golden curve
Gives one bright glance, then total disappears.

* * * * *

Confessed from yonder slow-extinguished clouds,
All ether softening, sober Evening takes
Her wonted station in the middle air,
A thousand shadows at her beck. First this
She sends on earth; then that of deeper die
Steals soft behind; and then a deeper still,
In circle following circle, gathers round,
To close the face of things. A fresher gale
Begins to wave the wood, and stir the stream,
Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn;
While the quail clamours for his running mate.
Wide o'er the thistly lawn, as swells the breeze,
A whitening shower of vegetable down
Amusive floats. The kind impartial care
Of Nature nought disdains: thoughtful to feed
Her lowest sons, and clothe the coming year,
From field to field the feathered seed she wings.

NIGHT.

Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,
The glowworm lights his gem, and through the dark
A moving radiance twinkles. Evening yields
The world to Night; not in her winter robe
Of massy Stygian woof, but loose arrayed
In mantle dun. A faint erroneous ray,
Glanced from th' imperfect surfaces of things,
Flings half an image on the straining eye;
While wavering woods, and villages, and streams,
And rocks, and mountain-tops, that long retained
Th' ascending gleam, are all one swimming scene,
Uncertain if beheld. Sudden to heaven

Thence weary vision turns; where, leading soft
The silent hours of love, with purest ray
Sweet Venus shines; and from her genial rise,
When daylight sickens till it springs afresh,
Unrivalled reigns the fairest lamp of night.

Towards the middle of the month, the spiked willow (spirea salicifolia), jessamine (jasminum officinale), hyssop (hyssopus officinalis), the bell-flower (campanula), and the white lily, have their flowers full blown. The wayfaring tree, or guelder rose, begins to enrich the hedges with its bright red berries, which in time turn black.

The potatoe (solanum tuberosum) is now in flower. Some observations on this useful plant we select from Dr. Skrimshire's entertaining Essays on Natural History.'-Potatoes differ much in appearance, in fruitfulness, in flavour, and other palatable qualities, and in the time of coming to perfection. Some potatoes are round, others oblong or kidney-shaped, some red, others white; some rough, some smooth, some grow in close clusters, and others at a distance from the parent roots. The stems also vary. The yield of some is fifty-fold, of others not above three or four-fold; some are always large, others all small. When cooked, they may be either sweet, insipid, watery, or waxy, or mealy. Some plants have come to their full growth in the beginning of August, others not till the end of October. All these varieties

are independent of soil, season, or other adventitious circumstance; and no two of the properties above specified are necessarily connected, so that there may be early red, or late red, productive red, or such as are but very little productive; there may be mealy red, and waxy red. In the same way the kidneyshaped, or the rough red, or any other, may vary in all the other particulars. But then let this very important fact be known and remembered, that each of these varieties will produce others with precisely the same peculiarities; that is, if propagated in the usual way by the root, or part of the root: but the seeds of any sort of potatoe will produce all the varieties. Thus, plant some of the white kidney potatoes which you know to be mealy when boiled, and that you have formerly observed to flower and come to perfection early; and plant only from such roots as you selected at the time as the most productive; and if properly cultivated, you will surely have a good produce of early white kidney-shaped mealy potatoes. If these observations are accurate, you will be ready to say it is surely a very easy matter to have excellent potatoes with all these good properties; and how happens it, therefore, that we so very seldom meet with such? It is because the cultivators, ignorant of the above important fact, have never paid the proper attention to selecting the best sorts, and have been led into several gross errors in consequence of it. It is a commonly received opinion, that potatoes should never be grown upon the same soil more than a few years together; and it is a common practice to select the smallest potatoes for planting, without any attention to other circumstances. These two errors alone are enough to deteriorate all the potatoes in the kingdom, and would in a course of time effectually root out all the best sorts, were there not a few more intelligent cultivators attending to the selection and growth of such only as are good.

Pomona now offers her fruits to allay the parching

thirst; currants, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, cherries, and cranberries, are all peculiarly refreshing at this season.

Towards the end of the month, the flowers of the laurustinus (viburnum tinus), and the burdock (arctium lappa), begin to open; and the elecampane (inula helenium), the amaranth (amaranthus caudatus), the great water plantain (alisma plantago), water mint (mentha aquatica), and the common nightshade, have their flowers full blown.

What spicy odours fill the luscious gale!
Carnations freckled with fantastic stripes,
Or pinks, bright-eyed, with flowery fulness burst
Their verdant cups, where little insects pass
Delicious lives. The
pea diffuses sweets;
Bright the nasturtium glows, and late at eve
Light lambent dances o'er its sleepless lids;
The jasmine, elegantly simple, shines:
What insect tribes, now glittering, make the day
More lustrous, drest in ever-varying dyes,
That in the joyous sunbeams proudly spread
Their coloured glories! Blush, ye vain! outdone
By painted flies! ye Fair, who at the glass
The gazeful morning waste! your beauties too
Are gifts of insect pride; mere flowery bloom
That mortals read each day, which, were ye wise,
Would plant unfading blossoms in the soul.
What rich variety of beauty paints

The butterfly! Yon enperor's gaudy pomp,
Or him, whose wings of radiant white, adorned
With orange tints, delight the noontide hours:
Or many a tender plumage, decked in all
That fancy forms, and all that colour gives.
What golden glories robe the worthless fly!
What scarlet lustre, and what purpling green!
The bumble beetle from the earth comes forth
In splendid beauty. Other glittering tribes,
With green, or brown wing, gleaming all in gold,
O'er the poor flitting race destruction bring;
Such oft the tyranny of specious power.

BIDLAKE.

Young frogs leave their ponds, and resort to the tall grass for shelter; swallows and martins congregate. previously to their departure; young partridges are

found among the corn; and poultry moult. The hoary beetle (scarabæus solstitialis) makes its appearance; bees begin to expel and kill drones; and the flying ants quit their nests.

The busy bee' still pursues his ceaseless task of collecting his varied sweets to form the honey for his destroyer man, who, in a month or two, will close the labours of this industrious insect by the suffocating fumes of brimstone. For poetical illustrations, see our last volume, pp. 216, 303.

Grouse-shooting usually commences towards the latter end of this month. The grouse (tetrao tetrix)· is found chiefly among the mountains in Scotland, and on the moors of Yorkshire, and in some parts of Wales. The male is two feet in length, and weighs nearly four pounds; while the female is only about half that length and weight. Their principal food is derived from the tops of heath, and the cones of the pine-tree, by which they acquire a delicate flavour, and are speedily fattened.

Now is it sometimes pleasure to steal forth
At sultry midnoon, when the busy fly
Swarms multitudinous, and the vexed herd
Of milch-kine slumber in yon elm-grove shade,

Or unrecumbent exercise the cud

With milky mouths. 'Tis pleasure to approach,
And, by the strong fence shielded, view secure
Thy terrors, Nature, in the savage bull.

Soon as he marks me, be the tyrant fierce-
To earth descends his head--hard breathe his lungs
Upon the dusty sod-a sulky leer

Gives double horror to the frowning curls

Which wrap his forehead-and ere long be heard
From the deep cavern of his lordly throat
The growl insufferable. Not more dread
And not more sullen the profoundest peal
Of the far distant storm, which o'er the deep,
Clothed in the pall of midnight premature,
At ev'ning hangs, and jars the solid earth
With its remote explosion. Tramples then
The surly brute, impatient of disdain,
And spurns the soil with irritated hoof,
Himself inhaler of the dusty cloud,