MAY. 139 



Like songs of an enchanted land, 

 Sung sweetly to some fairy band, 

 Listening with dofTd helms in each hand 

 In some green hollow near. 



W. H. 



Rye is in ear at the end of the month. This too 

 is the benting time of pigeons. After the spring- 

 corn has vegetated, until the harvest, they are 

 driven to immature seeds and green panicles of the 

 grasses for subsistence, and are seen in large flocks 

 in pasture-fields, where they pick up so bare a 

 living as to have occasioned an old couplet, often 

 quoted in the country, 



The pigeon never knoweth wo, 

 Until a-benting it doth go. 



The leafing of the trees is commonly completed 

 in this month. It begins with the aquatic kinds, 

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

 the oak, beech, and ash. These are sometimes 

 very thin of foliage even at the close of May. 



BEES. Towards the end of May the bee-hives 

 send forth their earliest swarms. One queen-bee is 

 necessary to form each colony ; and wherever she 

 flies, they follow. Nature directs them to march in 

 a body in quest of a new habitation ; which, if left 

 to their choice, would generally be in the trunk of 

 some hollow tree. But man, who converts the 

 labours and instincts of so many to his own use, 

 provides them with a more secure dwelling, and 



