THE EOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



peculiar loveliness, yet longs for the opening of 

 spring. To his impatience it has seemed as if it 

 would never come ; but, at last, on some morning 

 toward the end of April, the sun rises without a 

 cloud, the south-west wind blows softly, and he 

 walks forth, "wrapt in Elysium." Life is now 

 abroad : larks, by scores, are pouring forth sweet 

 carols, as they hang and soar in the dazzling 

 brightness of the sky ; the blackbird is warbling, 

 flute-like, in the coppice; swallows, newly come 

 across the sea, are sweeping and twittering joy- 

 ously; the little olive-clad warblers and white- 

 throats are creeping about like mice among the 

 twigs of the hedges; and, ha!— sweetest of all 

 sounds of spring 1— there are those two simple 

 notes, that thrill through the very heart,— the 

 voice of the cuckoo ! 



Here, too, are the butterflies. The homely 

 "whites'' of the garden are flitting about the 

 cabbages, and the tawny "browns" are dancing 

 along the hedge-rows that divide the meadows; 

 the delicate "brimstone" comes bounding over the 

 fence, and alights on a bed of primroses, itself 

 scarcely distinguishable from one of them. On the 

 commons and open downs the lovely little "blues" 

 are frisking in animated play ; and here and there 

 a still more minute "copper"— tiniest of the butter- 

 fly race— rubs together its little wings, or spreads 

 them to the sun, glowing with scarlet lustre like 

 a coal of fire. 



The beetles are active, too, in their way. The 

 tiger-beetle, with its sparkling green wing-cases, 

 flies before our footsteps with watchful agility, 

 and numerous atoms are circling round the blos- 

 soming elms, which, on catching one or two, we 

 find to belong to the same class; the dark-blue 

 Timarch a— the bloody-nose— is depositing its drop 

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