156 



is in itself beauty and the blossom which pro- 

 mises fruit. 



As March advances, so doth the train of Flora 

 increase ; the earlier flowers are succeeded by the 

 daffodil, the yellow auriculas, the coltsfoot with its 

 pink, its golden and its silvery stars, the cowslip 

 with its rose-coloured blossoms, and, if Favonius 

 invites, the violet which poets sing and all eyes 

 love. The hyacinth stately and rich, and the 

 narcissus delicately languid put on their blossoms, 

 and on the garden wall the peach and nectarine 

 vie with them in beauty. In the meadow, the 

 ash puts forth her grey buds, and the catkins of 

 the hazel and the willow tell that the life within 

 is no longer dormant. The hawthorn greens all 

 over with fresh young leaflets, and the daisy of 

 the field shews itself in that modest beauty, which 

 has drawn strains that can never die from the 

 poetic pens of Chaucer, Wordsworth, Burns, 

 Delta and Montgomery. 



It is now also that the trouts begin to rise in 

 the stream, and the water-fly may be seen skim- 

 ming along the surface of the secluded pool. On 

 fine and warm days the brimstone-winged butter- 

 fly issues from the wood to enjoy the noon-day 

 sunshine ; the ewe drops its lamb ; the sparrow 

 builds its nest ; and in the twilight, when Hes- 

 perus glimmers over the southern hill, the bat 

 comes forth on restless wing to spend an hour in 

 dalliance with evening, till scared to his ivy-bed 

 by the deepening shadows of the night. 



