1. Of the four seasons, it is only winter that in leaving us goes away grumbling and discontented. He has a sneaking habit of again and again returning, weeks after his lawful sway has ended, to wreak his spite upon gentle-hearted spring; now blanching her fresh young face with his cold slimy sleet, now drawing the blood into her cheeks with a rude blast from the north, and now hurling upon her a snowstorm that frightens her right away. No wonder that the birds, which left us in October, wait until spring's second month ere they venture back again to the land of their birth. Nor is it at all surprising that Flora keeps back her choicest blossoms until May, nor even that the

1 W. Oak Rhind, in the Illustrated London News, by special permission.

leaves, which in March seem all but bursting from their buds, dare not unfold until April, May, or even June has come.

2. Spite, however, of winter's churlish behaviour to his gentle successor, nature has in store some of her sweetest offspring to welcome the blushing spring on her earliest approach. Bravest of all the bravehearted things that shrink not from winter's spitefulness, is the little white snowdrop, 'first-born of the year's delight,' 'the morning star of flowers.' How often have we seen the sweet pale thing, in its anxiety to be quite in time to greet her, burst through the snow itself-alas! long before spring has come! How pretty it hangs its snow-white head, and how patiently it seems to wait during those few short days before it droops and dies-shall we say brokenhearted? The celandine, with its smooth, heartshaped leaves, and yellow star-like blossoms, is another charming little wilding that ventures forth early in the year.

Ere a leaf is on a bush,

In the time before the thrush

Has a thought about her nest,

comes the modest little flower that Wordsworth tried so hard to make beloved as one of the earliest heralds of the spring. Violets and primroses are perhaps spring flowers, rather than harbingers of the most delightful of the seasons; yet, long before spring has come really to stay with us, many an adventurous sweet violet may be found in sheltered places, wafting through the cold woodland its delicious incense; and in secluded lane-banks we come across many a pale

primrose scenting the air with its daintier, but not less charming, perfume. Closely following the brave little snowdrop and the celandine are the daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.

But daffodils, like the narcissus and the gay crocuses which now deck our gardens, are only occasionally found wild; and it is of nature's wildings we would speak. In the woods of our midland and southern counties may now be found the pretty pink flowers of the mezereon, or spurge laurel, and in the fields the bright yellow blossoms of the common coltsfoot, and the spike-like heads of the butterbur, and under shelter of the hedges the little blue flowers of the ground ivy and the veronica. The pretty whin-bush of our commons, like Burns's 'wee, modest crimsontipped flow'r,' may be seen blooming at all seasons of the year; but it is in the opening months of the year that we love best to see it.

3. What few there are we dearly love; yet it must be confessed that the flowers which venture to unbosom themselves to the rain and sleet of February and to the winds of March are very scanty. But it is not to Flora that the fresh young spring looks for her brightest welcome. When winter's frosts and snows encompassed all the land, some birds there were that disdained to seek shelter in foreign climes; it is from these the new-comer gets her heartiest greeting; the larks, thrushes, and blackbirds, that in the inclement season nestled together under the lifeless hedges and in the ditch-banks; the sparrows, yellow-hammers, and chaffinches, which then crowded the farmyards

and the warm manured fields near towns; the birds which not frost nor snow nor naked trees could drive from their woodland haunts; the storm-cock that sang loud and clear all through the wildest wintry weather; the darling robin, who in those cold dreary months made himself, or tried to make himself, at home everywhere.

4. Amid the louder lays of April and May, when the migratory birds have come to swell the spring harmony, Robin's soft strain is almost lost, like the warm hue on his breast; but now, before the springtime has quite begun, his sweet love-notes-for he has already wooed and won his love—are readily distinguished. Another little bird whose sweet strains are heard all through February and March, from wood, and field, and garden-hedge, is the merry bright-eyed chaffinch, that, like the redbreast, finds a mate early in the year, though he does not begin to build so soon as our winter favourite. In February and March may also be heard the low plaintive song of the hedge-accentor, and the flutelike notes of the woodlark.

5. Du of the early singers, three birds stand out more prominently than the rest, as the harbingers of spring these are the thrush, the blackbird, and the skylark. Although each of these three charming choristers has marked individuality in his song, it were hard to say which holds first place in our affections. Perhaps each one, as we hear it, seems in turn the dearest. Now it is the throstle's full purity of intonation that charms us, and his wonderful variety of notes; now the less varied but rich and mellow strain of the blackbird, or, perchance, his beautiful, inde

scribably plaintive call note; and now it is the skylark's matin hymn. We may hear the blackbird and

branches of the shrubberies afford them the seclusion that they love, though the thrush is not nearly so shy and retiring as the blackbird. Our solitary jet-black chorister is rarely seen except at feeding time, which is in the early morning and at sunset, on the grass land nearest his haunts. The skylark, too, is a solitary bird. But how different is his loneliness to the blackbird's! His haunts are far away from the sheltered shrubberies of the merle and thrush, away from trees altogether, on the wild pastures bordering the moorland, and on all high-lying fields where the expanse of sky is wide and unconfined. In February the skylark chooses his mate, and thence all through the months of spring we hear his wild, rich love-song. Not the nightingale himself in his leafy bower sings to his little sweetheart more unwearyingly, scarce more tenderly than our 'bird of the wilderness.' Let there be but the faintest touch of mildness in the air, and, bounding from the dripping grass, on fluttering wing, he mounts the air, and