II. 



THE RETURN OF THE SWALLOWS. 



LAST week's showers, much longed for and anxiously 

 expected after the apparently endless spell of bitter east 

 winds, have brought out the meadows at last into the 

 full fresh green of early spring. The buds upon the 

 horse-chestnuts, which stood idle and half-open for so 

 many days, have now finally burst forth into delicate 

 sprays of five-fingered foliage ; and the young larches 

 among the hillside hangers are revelling in the exquisite 

 and tender freshness of verdure which larches alone can 

 exhibit, and even they only for two short weeks of April 

 weather. As for the hedgerows, I really think I can never 

 recollect anything to equal them. The innumerable pecks 

 of March dust from which we have been suffering seem 

 to have brought forth gold enough in the celandines and 

 crowfoots for many royal ransoms ; and the masses of 

 primroses on the sunny banks are both thicker in tufts of 

 bloom and with larger individual blossoms than I ever be- 

 fore remember to have seen them. The copses on Woot- 

 ton Hill are carpeted with daffodils, wood-anemones, and 

 hyacinths, in great patches of yellow, blue, and white ; 

 and it is no wonder that to-day I should have seen the 

 swallows, enticed back from their winter quarters in Al- 

 geria by the sun and the flowers, flying low above the 

 gorse and the violet-beds in the undercliff, where they may 

 now catch hundreds of small insects on the wing around 

 the honey -bearing blossoms which attract them out of 

 their cocoons upon these warmer and brighter mornings. 



