thing in the old adage about the oak and the ash we ought to have dry weather.

In the garden the laburnums are in full bloom. In some counties this tree is called 'golden chain.' The simile is more appropriate than the Laureate's—

Dropping-wells of fire;

for the colour is much nearer that of gold than of flame. Our little dell is blue with the hyacinth, and there are two or three red campions in flower. The strawberries also are in bloom; the bud is on the mountain-ash, the elder, the lilac and the guelder-rose; and the fruit is set and well-formed on the gooseberry and the pear. We see before us already the promise of autumn.

To-night the moon, which is nearly at full, is shining on the hawthorns. They are much whiter than they were on the twelfth; and as the old familiar scent reaches me, the mind wanders away to other scenes and to earlier days. I bethink me of a rude hamlet by the margin of a Cheshire mere, where, in the season, the whole land seems to lie under a coverlet of white bloom. In a narrow lane, whose sandy banks rise some eight or ten feet high, there is a black-and-white timbered house, standing at the top of a steep garden, where all the old flowers are in

bloom. Above the two bee-hives, which rest on a wooden bench, there is a small leaded window, and in my dream I open the casement—a boy once more— and catch for the first time in my life the cool morning air laden with that homely sweetness which is the breath of the English thorn.

XIX.-BEES AND BLOSSOMS.

May 22.

IN the present general outburst of vernal foliage we naturally forget that the evergreens, as well as the deciduous trees, are putting forth their new leaves. This is one of those lesser beauties of the spring, easily overlooked, but full of interest when once observed.

The yew-tree now shows itself as a mass of leafage so dark as to be almost black, but wearing a fringe of yellowish green; the box has six or seven bright, new leaves at the end of each spray, in sharp contrast with the sombre but polished growth of last year; the ivy-buds are silver-grey, like the willow; those of the holly are edged with red, and the rhododendron

is a light green. In that delightfully childlike carol of Kit Marlowe, which gave such pleasure to the

gentle soul of dear old Izaak Walton, the Passionate Shepherd promises to his Love

A belt of straw and ivy-buds

With coral clasps and amber studs.

It may have been the flower-bud which is here alluded to, but I think not; for the song breathes of spring, and the ivy flower does not come until very late in the autumn, nor is it by any means so daintily beautiful as is a wreath of the half-opened leaves. The holly is blossoming now as well as leafing. The flowers grow in a curious cluster underneath the circle of leaves, and, though inconspicuous, are pretty enough when carefully examined. The new leaves of the holly are without spines, and as they are chiefly seen at the ends of the topmost branches, it must have been to them that Southey referred as 'the high leaves upon the holly-tree :'—

All vain asperities I, day by day,

Would wear away,

Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly-Tree.

All

While speaking of the evergreens, I must observe what a great boon to us are the rhododendrons. the winter through, when almost everything else is cheerless and bare, they make a belt of bright foliage round the house-foliage which, fortunately, never

looks better than when the pitiless rain is falling upon it; and now for more than a month they have been spreading out for us great masses of bloom-splendid when seen in bulk, and much more beautiful in detail than is usually supposed. The white-flowering kinds came out first. The unopened buds of these are of a pink colour, while the fullblown flowers are pure white; so that you often get from them the effect of a bush of white and red roses. The crimson sorts are out now, and with the saffron azaleas, also in bloom, they make a fine mass of colour in the garden, repeating the harmony, seen near them, of red hawthorn and laburnum.

Among the rhododendrons you can always find the bees. I saw the first bee here on the nineteenth of April. It was one which had strayed into the greenhouse. It seemed full-grown and was sumptuously attired in its raiment of black and amber fur. A week later I found one in the open air, working alternately among the rhododendrons and the currantbushes. By the middle of this month the air was filled with their humming. On one hot afternoon I counted thirty or forty of them threading the mazes of a single apple-tree in bloom. Their persistent and hurrying industry is quite fascinating. I stood watching one the other day for a quarter of an hour. It

had chosen a white rhododendron, and was working the tree systematically. It pushed into every blossom, trying even the unopened buds, and in some cases making good for itself a violent entrance. How swift is the motion of its wings, as it hangs in ecstasy of expectation over the flowers!-so swift indeed that the eye cannot catch it-you see only an apparently unmoving and nearly transparent slip of gauze. As the bee enters the flower the humming ceases, beginning again, after an instant of silent spoliation, with the most exact recurrence, just as the large body makes its dexterous and backward exit. After it had finished the whole bush it rose suddenly, and before I had time to escape played defiantly round and round my head, with a loud buzzing, as if to say, 'There, if I liked I could punish you for your inquisitive temerity;' and then, with a swimming motion, away it went up into the sky, above the tree tops, and further than my eye could follow. After it had gone a big, prosaic fly came and gleaned over the same ground. I do not know that anything finer has been written about the bee than these three stanzas, which I select from the 'Legend of the Hive,' an early poem by Stephen Hawker, the strange parson of Morwen

stow.