the fields and leafy lanes. Violent exertion is exceedingly trying. The cattle, oppressed by the heat, seek the grateful shade.

"On the grassy bank

Some ruminating lie; while others stand
Half in the flood, and often bending sip

The circling surface. In the middle droops

The strong laborious ox, of honest front,

Which incomposed he shakes; and from his sides
The troublous insect lashes with his tail."

Sometimes all that is audible now, increasing rather than lessening the sense of quiet by its gentle contrast, is the sound of insects. Here and there the bee sweeps across the ear with his gravest tone. The gnats, as Spenser says,

"Their murmuring small trumpets sounden wide;"

and now and then a note is emitted by the little musician of the grass. For,

"When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a yoice will run

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the grasshopper's."

Fruits begin to abound, and are more noticed as they are made more necessary and agreeable by the summer heat. Cherries offer their ever-grateful juice. Strawberries are in their greatest quantity and perfection. No vegetable production of the colder latitudes, or

FRUITS.

which can be ripened there without artificial heat, is at all comparable with this one in point of flavour. If the soil and situation be properly adapted to it, the more cold the climate, indeed the more bleak and elevated,

the more delicious is the berry. This fruit can only be had in perfection when taken from the plants, and in dry weather, for a very slight shower will render them comparatively flavourless.

The raspberry owes its name to the rough and bristly appearance of the fruit. The red and the white prefer spots that are shaded and rather moist, and are

both inhabitants of Britain.

The flavour of raspberries

is peculiarly fleeting: they should be eaten from the bush, and even there it does not continue above two or three days after they are ripe.

Currants appear in graceful bunches. The red is found growing naturally in many places both in England and Scotland; and the white is merely a variety of the red. The flavour of the latter is the most delicate. In those parts of our land where it is the custom to train the currant against the walls of the house, its rich dark leaves and brilliant fruit growing over the latticed window, present to the eye a pleasing picture. The berries of the black currant are larger than those of the red and white, but they are not so juicy, the taste is peculiar, and the crop on a single bush is less abundant.

The gooseberry, if not a native of Britain, is better adapted to cold than to warm climates. Its flavour here is very inferior to that it has in Scotland; and the gooseberries of Dundee or Inverness far surpass those carefully produced in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh The green are generally inferior to the yellow, and even to the white. The red are very various in flavour, but are commonly more acid than the others. The same remark may be made of most other fruits;

PROCESS OF GRAFTING.

and it accords with the fact, that acids change the vegetable blues to red.

An interesting process may here be noticed; it is that of grafting-a practice of great antiquity. For this purpose the person about to graft takes a scion, or branch, of the tree which he wishes to propagate, and having cut off the top from the growing stock of another, applies the former to the latter, and binds them firmly together. Thus, if a tree becomes old, but has healthy and vigorous roots, and it is thought desirable to renew or improve its fruitful qualities, it is cut off across the lower part of the stem, and forms the stock on which scions are grafted, which scions, taking root, become, in time, the fruit-bearing branches of the tree.

Yet,

As a general principle, the sorts to be united require to be considerably alike as to their woody fibre, sap, and pulp vessels, so that no decided interruption may take place in the ascent or descent of the juices. to effect improvement, there must be a certain difference between the varieties. Thus, the wild apple tree, bearing crabs too sour to be eaten, forms one of the best stocks on which a graft can be made, and for that reason alone it is grown by nurserymen from seeds. When, too, pears are grafted or budded on the wild

species, plums on plums, and peaches on peaches or almonds, the scion is, in regard to fertility, exactly in the same state as if it had not been grafted at all; while, on the other hand, a great increase of fertility arises from grafting pears on quinces, peaches on plums, apples on whitethorn. In these latter cases, the food absorbed from the earth by the root of the stock is communicated slowly and unwillingly to the scion. Under no circumstance is the communication between the one and the other as free and perfect as if their natures had been more nearly the same. The sap is impeded in its ascent, and the proper juices are impeded in their descent, whence arises that increase of secretion which is sure to produce increased fertility. Grafting is performed in two principal ways, scion or slip grafting, and grafting by approach, or in-arching, both of which are worthy of attention.

Let us not pass from this curious and useful operation without dwelling on the interesting and pious observations suggested by it, in Paterson's Manse Garden :

"It cannot be unworthy of remark, that a phenomenon so striking as that of the mountain ash, bearing, instead of its own little sour and unwholesome berries, large, sweet, and nutritious pears, in consequence of engrafting,