NATURE IN APRIL. I. 63 



home when we called. Almost touching it a Blackbird's nest 

 was ready for an egg, and an old homestead of the Bullfinch 

 does not escape our attention. 



To sum up April I cannot do better than go back to an old 

 work entitled "The Twelve Months," published in 1661, which 

 truly says: "It is the messenger of many pleasures, the cour- 

 tier's progress and the farmer's profit, the labourer's harvest 

 and the beggar's pilgrimage," and, I might add, the bird-lover's 

 paradise. 



