VARIABLENESS OF SEASONS. 145 



periods ; but particular mildness in the atmosphere and 

 additional warmth in the soil, accelerate this season ; 

 and of all the evils which threaten the horticulturist, 

 an early spring is most to be deprecated. An April 

 breathing odors, wreathed in verdure and flowers, the 

 willow-wren sporting in the copse, the swallow skim- 

 ming over the pool, lambs racing in the daisied mead, 

 may be a beautiful sight to contemplate, 



" Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyrs blow ; " 



but it is like the laugh of irony, the smile that lures to 

 ruin, 



" Which, hushed in grim repose, awaits his certain prey." 



Then comes a ruthless May, with Winter in her train, 

 who, with his frosty edge, unpitying shears away all the 

 expectancies, the beautiful promise of the year; and 

 we have to await returning seasons, and patient hope 

 for better things. A garden pining and prostrate from 

 the effects of a churlish, frosty May, leaves crisp and 

 blackened, flowers withered, torn, and scattered around, 

 are a melancholy sight the vernal hectic that consumes 

 the fairest offspring of the nursery. There is a plant, 

 however, the white-thorn (mespilus oxycanthus), the 

 May of our rustics, common in all places and situations, 

 that affords a good example of general steadiness to 

 time, uninfluenced by partial effects. An observation 

 of above twenty years upon this plant has proved how 

 little it deviates in its blossoming in one season from 

 another; and, under all the importunities and blandish- 

 ments of the most seductive Aprils, I have in all that 

 period never but twice seen more than a partial blossom 

 by the first of May. We hail our first-seen swallow as 

 a harbinger of milder days and summer enjoyments; 

 but the appearance of our birds of passage is not greatly 

 to be depended upon, as I have reason to apprehend 

 from much observation. They will be accelerated or re- 

 tarded in the time of their departure by the state of the 

 wind in the country whence they take their flight ; they 

 travel much by night, requiring in many instances the 

 light of the moon to direct them; and the actual time 

 of their arrival is difficult to ascertain, as they steal into 

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