The Naturalist's Diary

For APRIL 1818.

Lo! where the rosy-bosomed Hours,
Fair Venus' train appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,

The untaught harmony of SPRING;
While, whispering pleasure as they fly,
Cool zephyrs through the clear blue sky
Their gathered fragrance fling.

GRAY.

WITH the poets in every age Spring has been one of the most favourite subjects. When they would describe the beauties of Paradise, and the felicities of the Golden Age, there Spring flourishes in perpetual verdure, and smiles with everlasting pleasure.

Airs, vernal airs,

Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Lead on th' eternal SPRING.

Spring is described as a youth of a most beautiful air and shape, but not yet arrived at that symmetry of parts which maturer years might be supposed to give him. There is such a bloom, however, in his countenance, with such sweetness, complacency, and pleasure, that he appears created to inspire every bosom with delight. He is dressed in a flowing mantle of green silk, interwoven with flowers; a chaplet of roses on his head, and a jonquil in his hand. Primroses and violets spring up spontaneously at his feet, and all nature revives at his exhilarating aspect. Flora attends him on one hand, and Vertumnus, in a robe of changeable silk, on the other. Venus, with no other ornament than her own beauties, follows after. She is succeeded by the Graces with their arms entwined, and with loosened girdles,

moving to the sound of soft music, and striking the ground alternately with their feet. The Months that properly belong to this season, appear likewise in his train, with suitable emblematic decorations.

Pleasure is represented as taking her flight in winter to cities and towns, and revisiting the gladdened country in spring. Mrs. Barbauld has beautifully described this, as well as the gradual progress of the season, from its earliest infant efforts, to the perfection of vernal beauty in the delightful month of May :

When Winter's hand the rough'ning year deforms,
And hollow winds foretel approaching storms,
Then Pleasure, like a bird of passage, flies
To brighter climes, and more indulgent skies;
Cities and courts allure her sprightly train,
From the bleak mountain and the naked plain;
And gold and gems with artificial blaze,
Supply the sickly sun's declining rays.
But soon, returning on the western gale,
She seeks the bosom of the grassy vale;
There, wrapt in careless ease, attunes the lyre,
To the wild warblings of the woodland quire:
The daisied turf her humble throne supplies,
And early primroses around her rise.

* * * * *

Now the glad earth her frozen zone unbinds,
And o'er her bosom breathe the western winds.
Already now the snowdrop dares appear,
The first pale blossom of th' unripened year;
As Flora's breath, by some transforming pow'r,
Had changed an icicle into a flow'r:

Its name and hue the scentless plant retains,
And Winter lingers in its icy veins.
To these succeed the violet's dusky hue,
And each inferior flow'r of fainter hue;
Till riper months the perfect year disclose,
And Flora cries, exulting, See my rose.

What a wonderful revolution, indeed, in the universal aspect of Nature does the return of this lovely season exhibit! After having been long bound up with frost, or overspread with snow, the earth once more displays all the variety of plants and

flowers, is arrayed with the most beautiful and enlivening verdure, variegated with a numberless variety of hues, and exhales odours so exquisitely pure and fragrant, that every sense of every creature is awakened to inexpressible delight.

How cheerful along the gay mead
The daisy and cowslip appear!
The flocks, as they carelessly feed,
Rejoice in the spring of the year.
The myrtles that shade the gay bow'rs,
The herbage that springs from the sod,
Trees, plants, cooling fruits, and sweet flow'rs,
All rise to the praise of my God.
Shall Man, the great master of all,
The only insensible prove!
Forbid it, fair gratitude's call,

Forbid it devotion and love.

The Lord who such wonders could raise,
And still can destroy with a nod,
My lips shall incessantly praise:

My soul shall be wrapt in my GOD.

If there has been a medium proportion of easterly winds in the previous part of the winter, the month of April may be expected to be mild, with gentle showers; thus affording to vegetables an abundant supply of water, which is so indispensably necessary to their existence. The many thousand tribes of vegetables are not only formed from a few simple substances, but enjoy the same sun, vegetate in the same medium, and are supplied with the same nutri

ment.

Now spring the living herbs, profusely wild,

O'er all the deep-green earth, beyond the power
Of botanist to number up their tribes:
Whether he steal along the lonely dale,

In silent search; or through the forest rank,
With what the dull incurious weeds account,

Burst his blind way; or climb the mountain rock,
Fired by the nodding verdure of its brow;
With such a liberal hand has nature flung
Their seeds abroad; blown them about in winds;

Innumerous mixed them with the nursing mould,

The moist'ning current, and prolific rain.

THOMSON.

The arrival of the swallow about the middle of this month announces the approach of summer, and now all Nature assumes a more cheerful aspect. The swallow tribe is of all others the most inoffensive, harmless, entertaining, and social: all, except one species, attach themselves to our houses, amuse us with their migrations, songs, and marvellous agility.

There are four species of the hirundines that visit England; they arrive in the following order :-(1.) The chimney swallow (hirundo rustica) builds its nest generally in chimneys, in the inside, within a few feet of the top, or under the eaves of houses. (2.) The house martin (hirundo urbica), known by its white breast and black back, glossed with blue, visits us in great numbers. It builds under the eaves of houses, or close by the sides of the windows. (3.) The sand martin (hirundo riparia) is the smallest of our swallows, as well as the least numerous of them. It frequents the steep, sandy banks, in the neighbourhood of rivers, in the sides of which it makes deep holes, and places the nest at the end. (4.) The swift (hirundo apus) is the largest species, measuring nearly eight inches in length. These birds build their nests in lofty steeples and high towers, and sometimes under the arches of bridges. The following pretty lines on the winter retreat of the swallow are from the pen of Miss Charlotte Smith:

Were you in Asia? O relate,

If there your fabled sister's woes
She seemed in sorrow to narrate;
Or sings she but to celebrate
Her nuptials with the rose?

I would inquire how journeying long
The vast and pathless ocean o'er,
You ply again those pinions strong,
And come and build anew among

The scenes you left before?

But if, as colder breezes blow
Prophetic of the waning year,

You hide, though none know when or how,
In the cliff's excavated brow,

And linger torpid here;

Thus lost to life, what favouring dream
Bids you to happier hours awake,
And tells, that dancing in the beam,
The light gnat hovers o'er the stream,
The May-fly on the lake.

Or if, by instinct taught to know

Approaching dearth of insect food,

To isles and willowy aits you go,
And, crowding on the pliant bough,
Sink in the dimpling flood.

How learn ye, while the cold waves boom
Your deep and ouzy couch above,
The time when flowers of promise bloom,
And call you from your transient tomb,
To light, and life, and love.

Alas! how little can be known,

Her sacred veil where Nature draws;

Let baffled science humbly own,
Her mysteries understood alone

By HIM who gives her laws.

The next bird which appears is that sweet warbler, the motacilla luscinia, or nightingale. Although the nightingale is common in this country, it never visits the northern parts of our island, and is but seldom seen in the western counties of Devonshire and Cornwall, or in Wales; though it annually visits Sweden. It leaves us sometime in the month of August, and makes its regular return in the beginning of April. In England, nightingales frequent thick hedges and low coppices, and generally conceal themselves in the middle of some leafy bush. They commence their song in the evening, and continue it the whole night. For many interesting particulars of the nightingale, as well as numerous poetical illustrations, see our last volume, p. 110; T. T. for 1816, p. 117; T. T. for 1815, p. 139; and T. T. for 1814, p. 99.