RETURN OF MIGRATING BIRDS. 209 



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 melan- 

 choly 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 blos- 

 soming in one season from another ; and, under all 

 the importunities and blandishments 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 



