NEWP^ 



DEVOTUD TO AU-E-ICUIiTUHE, nOKTICULTUllE, AlfD KXNDEED AETS. 



NEW SERIES. 



Boston, May, 1870. VOL. IV.— XO. 5. 



B. P. EATON & CO., Pur.LisntKS, 

 Office, 34 JJLerchants' liow. 



MONTHLY. 



SIMON BRO\ra-, > editohs 

 8. FLETCHER, 1 -Ld^ohs. 



pecujjIar to may. 



"Plant Flowers! 

 Thickly dow the flower s eds sprinkle, 

 Let the aarliijg euith-Btare twirik.e 



Everywhere I 

 By fountain's brim, uhere the rainbow glancrg, 

 In garden walk, where your child's fooi daactb. 



Train them with carol" 



n E merry, 

 beautiful, 

 month of 

 May is here ! 

 Now fairly 

 awakened 



«5»«iwui^ 



l/r/^^;^^ \)) from its long 

 ^^■"'^ repose, all 



the vegeta- 

 ble kingdom 

 shows that, 

 in its winter 

 nap, it has 

 laid up new stores of energy, which are bud- 

 ding or blossoming into a freshness and fra- 

 grance as delightfal as though they met our 

 senses for the first time. 



The charming May-Flower has become a 

 love-token. They are sought for far and near, 

 and are not only sent as tokens of affection or 

 kind remembrance, but have become articles 

 of commerce, and may be found for sale in 

 various places. Fathers cany them home to 

 their children, and lovers to their affianced, 

 or those whom they wish to have become so. 

 Laughing girls deck their hair with them or 

 wear them on the bosom. 



But the great charm is to eearch for them 

 in pairs, young men and maidens, in the pure 

 air and glowing sun!4ght of a real May morn- 

 ning ! — the maidens, perhaps, like Proserpine, 

 themselves the fairest llowers ! Sometimes 

 they find them "beneath the elge of a snow- 

 bank, where they may be seen rising, the fra- 

 grant, pearly, white or rose-colored, crowded 

 flowers of this earliest harbinger of spring. 

 It abounds in the edges of woods about Ply- 

 mouth, in Massachusetts, as elsewhere, and 

 must have been the first flower to salute the 

 storm-beaten crew of the Mayllower on the 

 conclusion of their first terrible winter. Their 

 descendants have thence piously derived its 

 name." 



Each returning month of INIay seems to us 

 a new creation ; new sensations take posses- 

 sion of us ; new hopes crowd the mind, at 

 least as new as are the objects about us 

 which excite the sensations and hopes. It is 

 not vegetable matter alone that is quickened 

 into life, but the animal kingdom, from insect 

 to man, seems equally affected by the new 

 phase of existence. 



All these interesting changes of the seasons 

 are only a part of the stupendous changes 

 which are constantly going on. "Man him- 

 self is changing. Intellectual, refined, and 

 living more by his ingenuity than by his 

 strength, he is a different being from the sav- 

 age, in whom passion and physical force are 

 the chief traits. This change in man is also 



