While beasts of chase, by secret instinct moved,
Scud o'er the lawns, and, plunging into night,
In brake, or cavern, slumber out the day.
Invited by the cheerful Morn abroad,
See, from his humble roof, the good man comes
To taste her freshness, and improve her rise
In holy musing. Rapture in his eye,

And kneeling wonder, speak his silent soul,
With gratitude o'erflowing, and with praise!
Now Industry is up. The village pours
Her useful sons abroad to various toil :
The labourer here, with every instrument
Of future plenty armed; and there the swain,
A rural king amid his subject-flocks,
Whose bleatings wake the vocal hills afar.
The traveller, too, pursues his early road,
Among the dews of Morn. Aurora calls;
And all the living landscape moves around.

But see, the flushed horizon flames intense
With vivid red, in rich profusion streamed
O'er heaven's pure arch. At once the clouds assume
Their gayest liveries; these with silvery beams
Fringed lovely; splendid those in liquid gold;
And speak their sovereign's state. He comes, behold!
Fountain of light and colour, warmth and life!
The king of glory! Round his head divine
Diffusive showers of radiance circling flow,
As o'er the Indian wave up-rising fair
He looks abroad on Nature, and invests,
Where'er his universal eye surveys,

Her ample bosom, earth, air, sea, and sky,
In one bright robe, with heavenly tinctures gay.

Rural scenery is now much enlivened by the variety of colours, some lively and beautiful, which are assumed, towards the end of the month, by the fading leaves of trees and shrubs. These appearances are very striking even in our own fine forests, but cannot be compared with the magnificent scenes presented to the eye of the enraptured traveller in the primeval woods which shade the equinoctial regions of Africa and America.-(See our last volume, p. 269.)

Mr. Stillingfleet remarks, that, about the 25th, the leaves of the plane tree become tawny; of the hazel, yellow; of the oak, yellowish green; of the sycamore,

dirty brown; of the maple according to the soil and season, every hue, from pale yellow to a deep red and orange; of the ash, a fine lemon colour; of the elm, orange; of the hawthorn, tawny yellow; of the cherry, red; of the hornbeam, bright yellow; of the willow, still hoary. Yet, many of these tints cannot be considered complete, in most seasons, till the middle or latter end of October.

The silent and gradual progress of maturation is now completed; and human industry beholds, with triumph, the rich productions of its toil. The vege‐ table tribes disclose their infinitely various form of fruit; which term, while, with respect to common use, it is confined to a few peculiar modes of fructification, in the more comprehensive language of the naturalist, includes every product of vegetation, by which the rudiments of a future progeny are developed and separated from the parent plant.

Partridges (tetrao perdix) are in great plenty at this season of the year: they are chiefly found in temperate climates, but nowhere in such abundance as in England. Partridges pair early in the spring : about the month of May, the female lays from fourteen to eighteen or twenty eggs, making her nest of dry leaves or grass upon the ground. The young birds learn to run as soon as hatched, frequently encumbered with part of the shell sticking to them; and picking up slugs, grain, ants, &c.-See the 'Partridges, an Elegy,' in our last volume, p. 282.

There are in blow, in this month, nasturtia, china aster, marigolds, sweet peas, mignionette, golden rod, stocks, tangier pea, holy-oak, michaelmas daisy, saffron (crocus sativus), and ivy (hedera helix). Among the maritime plants may be named, the marsh glasswort (salicornia herbacea), and the sea-stork's bill (erodium maritimum), on sandy shores; and the officinal marsh-mallow (althaea officinalis) in salt

marshes.

Herrings (clupea) pay their annual visit to England

in this month, and afford a rich harvest to the inhabitants of its eastern and western coasts. Exclusive of the various methods of preparing this fish for sale, in different countries, an immense quantity of oil is drawn from it, forming a great and important commercial article among the northern nations.

Various of the feathered tribe now commence their autumnal music; among these, the thrush, the blackbird, and the woodlark, are now conspicuous. The phalana russula, and the saffron butterfly (papilio hyale), appear in this month. Flies (mus ca) abound in our windows. See T. T. for 1816, p. 240; and our last volume, p. 274. Various are the means used to get rid of these troublesome guests, who not only pester us with their numbers, but contaminate our furniture: the most successful antidote is arsenic dissolved in water, with the addition of a little sugar; this they readily sip, and it quickly proves fatal. The composition has been, and is still, held as a secret by some; but, where there are children or servants, it will perhaps be better to bear the annoyance of the flies, than run the risk of poisoning some part of the family. For some pretty lines addressed to a fly, see T. T. for 1817, p. 277.-The snake sloughs or casts its skin in this month.

The chimney or common swallow (hirundo rustica) disappears about the end of September. The congregating flocks of swallows and martins on house tops, but principally upon the towers of churches on our coast, are very beautiful and amusing in this and the succeeding month. The eastern coast from Harwich to Winterton-ness, in Norfolk, is principally resorted to by these birds. At Dunwich, in Suffolk, in particular, great quantities of swallows are observed to land in the spring, and to take their departure for other climes the latter end of September, or beginning of October. I was at Dunwich,' says

the author of a Tour through Great Britain, about the beginning of October, and, lodging in a house that looked into the churchyard, I observed in the evening an unusual multitude of swallows, sitting on the leads of the church, and covering the tops of several houses round about. This led me to inquire what was the meaning of such a prodigious number of swallows sitting there. I was answered that this was the season when the swallows, their food failing here, begin to leave us, and return to the country, wherever it be, from whence they came; and that this being the nearest land to the opposite coast, and the wind contrary, they were waiting for a gale, and might be said to be wind-bound. This was more evident to me when I found, that, in the morning, the wind had come about to the north-west in the night, and there was not one swallow to be seen.'

To the SWALLOW.

Twittering tenant of the sky,
Whither, whither wilt thou fly?
Summer blithely frolics round;
Florid beauties grace the ground:
Rosy odours, youthful gales,

Still breathe from bowers and verdant vales.

Whither, fluttering, wilt thou fly,
Swiftest courser of the sky?
Still in brook, or fountain spring,
Dip thy never-weary wing;
Sweep along the level mead,
Where peaceful herds securely feed.

Happy wanderer, ever free,
All my fancies follow thee;
Mount with thee the blue serene,

Visit every foreign scene:
And, while seasons vary here,

With thee, share summer all the year.

Whither, whither wilt thou fly,
Swiftest courser of the sky?
Stay, O stay, till autumn's hand
Purple o'er my native land;
Mildness, beauty, joy, and love,

And fellow-warblers charm the grove,

Of the migration and torpidity of the swallow, we have already treated at length, in T. T. for 1814, 1815, and 1816; to these volumes, therefore, we refer the ingenious naturalist, and to Mr. Forster's Observations on the Bromal Retreat of the Swallow, third edition, for further information on this curious subject. See also the Swallows,' an Elegy, in our last volume, p. 128.

M. Sonnini, during his travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, had frequent opportunities of observing the arrival of various birds of passage from Europe; among which were many common in the woods of France and Italy in the spring. After speaking of the arrival of the bec-figue, or fig-pecker, he says, I remarked more particularly, at Rosetta and at Alexandria, some other species of birds of passage during the month of September, the period when the absence of these new guests of a country more mild, transforms our naked forests into gloomy solitudes. The bird which fills our groves with his shrill whistling, as it embellishes them with his brilliant plumage, the loriot, perches himself, from preference, on the mulberry-trees of the gardens in the environs of inhabited places; but he does not utter his sonorous voice: he is silent in Egypt; he has not there to sing his loves. He serves for food, and his passage is little more than fifteen days.

But there is no passage of birds more considerable, and at the same time more unaccountable, than that of the quails. They arrive and re-assemble on the sandy shores of Egypt in very numerous companies. It is difficult to conceive how a bird, whose flight is heavy, and which cannot long continue on the wing, which we see alight in our fields almost as soon as in motion, should venture to traverse so vast an extent of sea. The islands which are scattered over the Mediterranean, the vessels which sail along its surface, serve them indeed for resting-places, and for