THE SEASON OE BUTTERCUPS. 
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clamorous, croaking, sable-plumed race of petty swindlers, 
spending half the spring in stealing each other's sticks, 
and fighting no end of battles in the thick of the 
branches, until that universal conqueror—the god of the 
Season of Buttercups—has them in his grasp, and then 
they build nests, and prattle of love, and hatch large 
broods of baby rooks—destined, like their parents, to be 
alternately devils and doves—the very models of parental 
care and social union. Besides these, there are the wood- 
pigeons, which now gather back to their old mossy 
haunts, cowering together in the leafiest of coverts, 
besides the loveliest of grey old nooks, where little runnels 
flow unseen, and little seeds burst into yellow sprays, 
under the matting of the last year's leaves, to spring up 
into waving heads of greenness, and sit in the shadow of 
the oaks, beguiled by the soft, heart-touching “ coo, coo," 
which tells of love amid the branches. April bringing 
up the rear of spring visitants, gives us quails, turtle¬ 
doves, swifts, puffins, swallows, martins, and lapwings; 
and life in innumerable forms assumes its noblest aspect, 
warmed into new vigour with the expansion of the 
season, enhanced in its beauty by the development of 
increased provision for its support, and lifted half-way 
into the region of the unreal by that divine impulse which 
is the soul of living Nature, and which, while it adds 
heroic attributes alike to man and brute, conserves that 
succession of creatures to which all the provisions of 
Nature are attached as to one continuous thread. 
Poets, painters, and gossipers, have all dealt with 
spring as a season of beauty only, as a time of renewal 
and regeneration; forgetting that it is the season also of 
