THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



every hedge-bank — who can look upon it, and not 

 love it? Who can mark the wild hyacinths, grow- 

 ing in battalions of pale stalks, each crowned 

 with its clusters of drooping bells; and inter- 

 spersed with the tall and luxuriant cowslips, so 

 iike and yet so different, filling the air with their 

 golden beauty and sugary fragrance, without 

 rapture? Who can discover the perfumed violet 

 amidst the rampant moss, or the lily of the valley 

 beneath the rank herbage, without acknowledging 

 how greatly both beauty and worth are enhanced 

 by humility? 



If in this favoured land we are conscious of 

 emotions of peculiar delight, when we see the face 

 of nature renewing its loveliness after winter, 

 where yet the influence of the dreary season is 

 never so absolute as quite to quench the activities 

 of either vegetable or animal life, and where that 

 face may be said to put on a somewhat gradual 

 smile ere it breaks out into full joyous laughter- 

 much more impressive is the coming in of spring 

 with all its charms in such a country as Canada, 

 where the transition is abrupt, and a few days 

 change the scene from a waste of snow to uni- 

 versal warmth, verdure, and beauty. I have ob- 

 served, with admiration, how suddenly the brown 

 poplar woods put on a flush of tender yellow- 

 green from the rapidly-opening leaves; how quickly 

 the maple trees are covered with crimson blos- 

 soms ; how brilliant flowers are fast springing up 

 through the dead leaves in the forests; how gay 

 butterflies and beetles are playing on every bank 

 where the snow lay a week before ; and how the 

 bushes are ringing with melody from hundreds of 

 birds, which have been for months silent. The 

 first song of spring comes on the heart with 

 peculiar power, after the mute desolation of win- 

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