II. 



THE RETURN OF THE SWALLOWS. 



LAST week's showers, much longed for and anxiously 

 expected after the apparently endless spell of bitter east 

 winds, have brought out the meadows at last into the 

 full fresh green of early spring. The buds upon the 

 horse-chestnuts, which stood idle and half-open for so 

 many days, have now finally burst forth into delicate 

 sprays of five-fingered foliage ; and the young larches 

 among the hillside hangers are revelling in the exquisite 

 and tender freshness of verdure which larches alone can 

 exhibit, and even they only for two short weeks of April 

 weather. As for the hedgerows, I really think I can 

 never recollect anything to equal them. The innumer- 

 able pecks of March dust from which we have been 

 suffering seem to have brought forth gold enough in the 

 celandines and crowfoots for many royal ransoms ; and 

 the masses of primroses on the sunny banks are both 

 thicker in tufts of bloom and with larger individual 

 blossoms than I ever before remember to have seen them. 

 The copses on Wootton Hill are carpeted with daffodils, 

 wood-anemones, and hyacinths, in great patches of yellow, 

 blue, and white ; and it is no wonder that to-day I should 

 have seen the swallows, enticed back from their winter 



