\J2 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



Nature keeps up a sort of guerilla warfare with 

 winter long after her main army has been de- 

 feated, and brave weeds find safe retreats and 

 flourish unmolested in neglected nooks to which 

 attention is never directed ; and so, casting a 

 careless glance over the fields and forest, we 

 exclaim, in our ignorance, how desolate ! 



The million lances of the thistle may avail 

 nothing against the legions of frost ; but it 

 would not seem so, for here, long after the grass 

 is wilted and brown, a blooming thistle lifts its 

 purple plumes and invites the goldfinch, now in 

 late autumn, just as it did in the steamy hot 

 sunny August afternoons. This is an encour- 

 agement surely to go deeper into the asserted 

 desolation of the day. The goldfinch is no 

 stranger even in midwinter, but when Christmas 

 is not far off you do not expect to find him on 

 a blooming thistle ; yet one was thus found to- 

 day, in mid-November. 



Perhaps it was when the glaciers still rested on 

 our nearest hill-sides that the ancestral crested 

 tit looked out upon the sunshine of a bright 

 May morning, and in the exuberance of its joy 

 whistled, Sweet here. Whatever the truth, this 



