ears being alone visible, as they bow before every breeze that blows over them. The oats are whitening apace, and quiver, each individual grain on its light stem, as they hang like rain-drops in the air. Looked on separately, and at a distance, these three now wear a somewhat dull and monotonous hue, when growing in great spaces; but these will be intersected, in all directions, by patches of the bril liant emerald which now begins to spring afresh on the late-mown meadows; by the golden yellow of the rye, in some cases cut, and standing in sheaves; by the rich dark green of the turnip-fields; and still more brilliantly by sweeps, here and there, of the bright yellow charlock, the scarlet corn-poppy, and the blue succory, which, like perverse beauties, scatter the stray gifts of their charms in proportion as the soil cannot afford to support the expenses attendant on them."

On the high downs, "all the little molehills are purple with the flowers of the wild thyme, which exhales its rich aromatic odour as you press it with your feet; and among it the elegant blue heath-bell is nodding its half-dependent head from its almost invisible stem,-its perpetual motion, at the slightest breath of air, giving it the look of a living thing hovering on invisible wings just above the ground. Every here and there, too, we meet with little patches of dark green heaths, hung all over with their clusters of exquisitely wrought filigree flowers, endless in the variety of their forms, but all of the most curiously delicate fabric, and all, in their minute beauty, unparalleled by the proudest occupiers of the parterre. This is the singular family of plants that, when cultivated in pots, and trained to form heads on separate stems, give one the idea of the forest trees of a Lilliputian people." Here, too, are the " innumerable little thread-like spikes that now rise from out the level turf, with scarcely perceptible seed-heads at top, and keep the otherwise dead flat perpetually alive, by bending and twinkling beneath the sun and breeze."

In the, green lanes "we shall find the ground beneath our feet, the hedges that enclose us on either side, and the dry banks and damp ditches beneath them, clothed in a beautiful variety of flowers that we have not yet had an opportunity of noticing. In the hedge-rows which are now grown into impervious

walls of many-coloured and many-shaped leaves, from the fine filigree-work of the white-thorn, to the large, coarse, round leaves of the hazel) we shall find the most remarkable of these, winding up intricately among the crowded branches, and shooting out their flowers here and there, among other leaves than their own, or hanging themselves into festoons and fringes on the outside, by unseen tendrils. Most conspicuous among the first of these is the great bind-weed, thrusting out its elegantly-formed snow-white flowers, but carefully concealing its leaves and stem in the thick of the shrubs which yield it support. Nearer to the ground, and more exposed, we shall meet with a handsome relative of the above, the common red and white wild convolvolus; while all along the face of the hedge, clinging to it lightly, the various coloured vetches, and the enchanter's night-shade, hang their flowers into the open air; the first exquisitely fashioned, with wings like the pea, only smaller; and the other elaborate in its construction, and even beautiful, with its rich purple petals turned back to expose a centre of deep yellow; but still, with all its beauty, not without a strange and sinister look, which at once points it out as a poison-flower. It is this which afterwards turns to those bunches of scarlet berries which hang so temptingly in autumn, just within the reach of little children, and which it requires all the eloquence of their grandmothers to prevent them from tasting. In the midst of these, and above them all, the woodbine now hangs out its flowers more profusely than ever, and rivals in sweetness all the other field scents of this month.

"On the bank from which the hedgerow rises, and on this side of the now nearly dry water-channel beneath, fringing the border of the green path on which we are walking, a most rich variety of field-flowers will also now be found. We dare not stay to notice the half of them, because their beauties, though even more exquisite than those hitherto described, are of that unobtrusive nature that you must stoop to pick them up, and must come to an actual commune with them, before they can be even seen distinctly; which is more than our desultory and fugitive gaze will permit,-the plan of our walk only allowing us to pay the passing homage of a word to those objects that will not be overlooked. Many of the