THE SPRING. 25 



the year into one summer, at those places to which 

 low and slanting suns give an average temperature 

 which would not suffice for maturing and ripening the 

 more valuable grains and fruits, and to concentrate 

 into one little season of almost continual day the still 

 feebler warmth of those climes yet nearer the poles, 

 where, were there a uniformity in the lengths of the 

 days, all would necessarily be desolation and sterility. 

 We can form some idea of what a very large portion 

 of the earth would have been but for this simple 

 arrangement, when we look at the temperature of 

 England about the beginning of April. At that time 

 we find the buds expanding, some of the blossoms out, 

 the lambs on the pasture, the birds beginning their 

 love songs, and some few insects upon the wing. We 

 hail the spring of life, and the dawn of beauty ; but 

 refreshing as is the breath of spring, we must not 

 attribute the whole, or nearly the whole, to the young 

 year. Nature took her own way of preserving each of 

 them during the inclemency of the winter ; they emi- 

 grated, they had their clothing augmented, they were 

 cased up in wax or in silk, or they -buried themselves 

 in the earth, or under the bark of trees ; but they are 

 all the children of the sun, and had it not been for the 

 warmth of the preceding summer and autumn, we 

 should have looked for them in vain. 



Well, but however they come, they are here: how 

 would they fare, if the temperature of the beginning of 

 April were to continue ? The warmth of the mid-day 

 sun would tempt the bud to put out its leaf a little, 

 though, from its cold drought, it would drink up the 

 D 



