on sowing peas, or other seed, when the gooseberry flowered, they are ready for gathering when the corn-marigold flowered, we are pretty sure that each succeeding year the same uniformity will prevail." It is well known that our ancestors named some months according to their natural appearances: thus February was termed Sprout-kale, and March, Stormymonth; and Mr. Loudon tells us that the Indians of America plant their corn when the wild-plum blooms, or when the leaves of the oak are about the size of the squirrel's ears. The names of some of their months are also given according to their observations of vegetable changes. Thus, one is called by the poetical name of the budding-month, and one rather later is termed the flowering-month; while the autumn is mournfully characterized by a word which signifies the fall of the leaf.

"As the spring among the seasons, are the young among the people," was the remark of a writer of antiquity; and its truth has been recognised in all succeeding ages. It has been

well said, that the loveliest of earth's many contrasts is that of green and white; and so fresh and tender is the green which the leaves on the spray and the young grass present to us at this season, and so clear and frequent is the white tint of early flowers, that this contrast may be seen in our every spring walk. In a few months later, both the foliage and the grass have a far deeper and fuller hue, but now they give to earth a character of freshness, and seem to remind us of what the world must have been when first created.

The flowers of summer, like those of sunny climates, are mostly remarkable for their bright colours and a great degree of fragrance. This odour is emitted by means of the sun's influence, and most flowers are either scentless, or yield diminished perfumes during darkness. The night-scented flowers are exceptions to this rule, but they are few in this country, and rare in any, except in those lands which are situated in the hottest regions of the globe. Light is of great importance to plants, enabling them to

derive nutriment from the matter which they extract from the soil. Plants exposed to a great degree of solar influence are not only harder and more vigorous, but also fuller of colour, than those of shady places; and odoriferous flowers are found in most abundance and greatest perfection, in countries on which the sun shines with fullest power.

"Chill is thy breath, pale autumn," sings the poet, though, had not poets called this season pale, we might have termed it the rosy, or the golden autumn. In the rich month of September the fruits of the earth are most abundant, and these are chiefly of a deep red, and always of some full colour, as purple or brown. The berries which hang about the autumn trees may vie with the blackness of the jet, or the redness of the coral or ruby. There are the berries of the bryony and the honeysuckle, of a deep and soft red; and the more brilliant scarlet clusters of the common nightshade; and the glossy red bunches of the dogwood; and the mountainash, and the wayfaring-tree; and all the nume

rous hips and haws, upon which revel the merry songsters, and the meek woodmouse, and the many little creatures for whom a feast has been spread with a liberal hand. A deep yellow tint is also the predominating colour among autumn flowers, almost all our native blossoms at this season having either some tinge of redness, or wearing that deep yellow in which, as the Chinese say, the sun loves to array himself: while the deep and varied colour of the wild wood and the shrubbery delight the artist and the lover of nature, who pause in their walks to mark, in the foliage, the rich green tint, the bright yellow, the brown, or the crimson.

Our native plants often display a considerable degree of this latter hue upon their stems and leaves at the decline of the year. Some few, like the red-cornel, have their foliage altogether red; others have here and there,

"The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can;
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
From the topmost twig that looks up at the sky."

The prevalence of crimson foliage is, however, often an indication that the plant to which it belongs is of American origin. Never does the Virginian-creeper present half so lovely an appearance as when, clothed in its autumn suit, it might rival, in depth and richness of colour, some of the glowing tints of an autumnal sunset.

As in the spring the trees gradually assume their sunny livery, so in the autumn they gradually lose it. The walnut tree soon drops its foliage, and the park is early strewed with the large leaves of the horse-chestnut. By the end of September the town walk has lost its shade of limes, and nothing but a few brown leaves remain to tell of the lately shaded grove; but it is not till November has passed, amid stormy gusts and drenching rains, that the apple-tree of the orchard and the oak of the forest hang out their naked branches to the winter winds; while the privet and ivy, the holly and the butcher'sbroom of the hedges, and the evergreens of the garden, still remain to cheer us, and the brown leaves of the young beech tree wait for the