The naked grove repeats the early lays
Of songsters floating in the melting air;
The willow boar and hazel hedge are drest
In flowers that ask no summer's ripening ray:
With bleating flocks the valleys ring confused;
While tender lambs, tottering with novel life,
In shrill distress implore maternal aid,
The while they frequent tug the balmy teat.
Thus mild and soothing walks the gentle day,
And night, attentive to the woodlark's note,
Forgets her slumbers in the sweets of song.

BIDLAKE.

The flowers of the crocus (crocus vernus) appear, before their leaves are grown to their full length; the barren strawberry (fragraria sterilis); the laurustinus (viburnum tinus); and the yew-tree (taxus baccata), are in flower. The elder-tree (sambucus nigra) begins to put forth its flower buds, and the catkins of the hazel are very conspicuous in the hedges. The gooseberry bush (ribes grossularia) and the red currant (ribes rubrum) show their young leaves about the end of the month. The hepatica (anemone hepatica), unless the weather be severe, gives brilliance to the garden with its bright pink flowers; and the houndstongue (cynoglossum) with its more modest flowers of pink or light blue. Many plants appear above ground in February, but few flowers, except the snowdrop, are to be found. This icicle changed into a flower' is sometimes fully opened from the beginning of the month.

The husbandman is now eager to commence the work of ploughing, which important business is finished in this month, if the weather permit.

To a MOUNTAIN DAISY :

On turning one down with the Plough.

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush among the stoure

Thy slender stem;

To spare thee now is past my pow'r,

Thou bonny gem!

Amid the storm.

Scarce reared above thy parent earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield,
High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield;
But thou beneath the random bield

O' clod or stane,

Adorns the histie stibble field,

Unseen, alane.

In this month, early potatoes are set, hedges repaired, trees lopped, and wet lands drained. Poplars, willows, osiers, and other aquatics, are planted.

See the remainder of this beautiful poem in Burns's Works, as also the 'Turning up a Mouse's Nest,' both of them exquisite little productions.

Pheasant-shooting usually terminates about the 1st, and partridge-shooting about the 15th, of this month. Among the juvenile sports of this month, skating and sliding are still practised, if a hard frost continue. Again night passes, and severer frost

Binds fast impeded nature. Soon as morn
Kindles, the village younker tries his foot
Upon the frozen margin of the pool,
Fearful to venture on the slippery floor,
Lest, bursting with abrupt and hideous crash,
It drown his instep, and his naily shoe
Drench with the chilly element below.
Bold with success, he tries a daring stroke
Along its verge, and now magnanimous
Darts o'er the fragile centre of the flood
His long resounding slide. Safe borne to shore,
He turns impatient, and with rushing heel
Shapes o'er the pond his parallel return.
Then round and round he leads his gliding team
Of schoolmates well-assured, and panting Sport
Glows with her effort, nor bestows a thought
Upon the lurking peril of her game.

The few fine days towards the latter end of this month afford many opportunities of cultivating our knowledge of Nature, even in her minutest works. The results of a morning's walk at this season are given at length in T. T. for 1817, p. 53.

Some particulars of the severity of the winter in Russia, Sweden, &c. have already been related in our former volumes: we shall now give a short account of this season in Spitzbergen.

The single night of this dreadful country begins about the 30th of October; the Sun then sets, and never appears till about the 10th of February. A glimmering, indeed, continues some weeks after the setting of the Sun: then succeed clouds and thick darkness, broken by the light of the Moon, which is as luminous as in England, and, during this long night, shines with unfailing lustre. The cold strengthens with the new year; and the Sun is ushered in with an unusual severity of frost.

By the middle of March, the cheerful light grows strong; the aretic foxes leave their holes; and the sea-fowl resort, in great multitudes, to their breeding places. The Sun sets no more after the 14th of May; the distinction of day and night is then lost.

In the height of summer the Sun has heat enough to melt the tar on the decks of ships; but from August its power declines: it sets fast. After the middle of September day is hardly distinguishable, and, by the end of October, takes a long farewel of this country: the days now become frozen, and winter reigns triumphant.

Earth and soil are denied to the frozen regions of Spitzbergen at least, the only thing which resembles soil is the grit worn from the mountains by the power of the winds, or the attrition of cataracts of melted snow this, indeed, is assisted by the putrefied lichens of the rocks, and the dung of birds, brought down by the same means. The composition of these islands is stone, formed by the sublime hand of omnipotent Power; not fritted into segments, transverse or perpendicular, but cast, at once, into one immense and solid mass. A mountain, throughout, is but a single stone, destitute of fissures, except in places cracked by the irresistible power of frost, which often causes lapses, attended by a noise like thunder, and scattering over their bases rude and extensive ruins,

The vallies, or rather glens, of this country, are filled with eternal ice or snow. They are totally inaccessible, and known only by the divided course of the mountains, or where they terminate in the icebergs or glaciers. No streams water their dreary bottoms ; and even springs are denied. The mariners are indebted for fresh water solely to the periodical cataracts of melted snow in the short season of summer, or to the pools in the middle of the vast fields of ice.

Yet, even here, Flora deigns to make a short visit, and to scatter a scanty stock over the bases of the

1

hills her efforts never rise beyond a few humble herbs, which shoot, flower, and seed, in the short warmth of June and July, and then wither into rest until the succeeding year. Among these, however, the salubrious scurvy-grass, the resource of distempered frames, is providentially most abundant.

Where the countries have been long inhabited, in all the arctic coasts of Europe, Asia, and America, the natives, with very few variations and exceptions, seem to be a distinct species both in body and mind, and not to be derived from the adjacent nations, or any of their better proportioned neighbours. Their stature is from four to four feet and a half, and their skins are swarthy. From use, they run up rocks like goats, and up trees like squirrels. They are so strong in the arm, that they can draw a bow which a stout Norwegian can hardly bend; yet lazy even to torpidity, when not incited by necessity; and pusillanimous and nervous to a hysterical degree. These are the natives of Finmark and Lapland. The coasts east of Archangel, as far as the river Oby, are inhabited by the Samoeids; a race as short as the Laplanders, but much uglier, and more brutalized; their food being the carcasses of horses, or any other animals. They use the reindeer to draw their sledges, but are not civilized enough to make it a substitute for the cow.

Hard by these shores, where scarce his freezing stream
Rolls the wild Oby, live the last of men ;

And half-enlivened by the distant Sun,
That rears and ripens man as well as plants,
Here human nature wears its rudest form.
Deep from the piercing season sunk in caves,
Here, by dull fires, and with unjoyous cheer,
They waste the tedious gloom. Immersed in furs,
Doze the gross race. Nor sprightly jest, nor song,
Nor tenderness they know; nor aught of life,
Beyond the kindred bears that stalk without.
Till morn, at length, her roses drooping all,
Sheds a long twilight brightening o'er their fields,
And calls the quivered savage to the chase.

THOMSON.