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There you are mistaken; for as soon as I have completed a plum, I mean to retire to my box in the country.

My most solvent friend, you may deceive yourself, but you cannot deceive me. You will no more be satisfied with one plum in your second childhood, than you were in your first;-there is but one box to which you will ever retire, and into that you will be screwed down, narrow as it is, with all your Consols and Reduced, and your villa at Mile End; ay, and your Bank-stock and Exchequer-bills into the bargain: so you may as well make holiday while you can, and follow me into the green lanes and freshsmelling groves.

But I don't want to see any trees: it was only last Wednesday week that I got down to Mile End time enough to walk round my own plantations with a lantern, when I saw ever so many; some of them twenty feet high.

Nay, then, you may well be sick of the country, and can have no possible occasion to go a-Maying.— Gentle maiden, you, at least, will not refuse me when I assure you that, whatever the ancients may have said to the contrary*, May is Love's own month. Was not "Zephyr with Aurora playing,

As he met her once a-Maying,”

* It was formerly considered inauspicious to marry in this month, to which Ovid alludes in his Fasti:

"Nec viduæ tædis eadem, nec virginis apta
Tempora; quæ nupsit, non diuturna fuit :
Hac quoque de causa, si te proverbia tangunt,
Mense malum Maio nubere vulgus ait."

when he became the happy father of Mirth? "Love, whose month is ever May," is a phrase of Shakspeare's, no uninitiated investigator of the human heart; but he meant the May of the country, not the season of fashion and dissipation in London, where the young men are too much absorbed by ambition or avarice to feel any kindly expansion of the affections. Will you not join in our rural rambles ?

Hark! the cuckoo calls us; and I cannot wait a moment longer. If you wish to share our festival, follow me into the warm thick-flowering meadows, or the budding copses.

WALKS IN THE GARDEN.-No. II.

But are not wholesome airs, though unperfumed
By roses; and clear suns, though scarcely felt ;
And groves, if unharmonious, yet secure
From clamour, and whose very silence charms;
To be preferr'd to smoke, to the eclipse
That metropolitan volcanoes make,

Whose Stygian throats breathe darkness all day long;
And to the stir of commerce, driving slow,

And thundering loud, with his ten thousand wheels?

CowPER.

IN our last walk, we discovered the approach of rain from the shutting up of the Convolvulus, and Anagallis arvensis, commonly called the poor man's weather-glass;-the rain is now over; but as the clouds have not yet dispersed, we can derive no assistance from this sun-dial in ascertaining the time of the day.

However, we need not be at a loss; this Helianthus, or annual sunflower, is not only

"True as the dial to the sun,

Although it be not shone upon;"

but enables us to form some estimate of the hour, even when the great luminary is invisible-an advantage which we cannot obtain from the dial. See, its large radiated disc already inclines westward, whence we may be sure that the afternoon has commenced it will follow the setting sun, and at night, by its natural elasticity, will again return to the east, to meet the morning sun-beams. It was thought, that the heat of the sun, by contracting the stem, occasioned the flower to incline towards it; but the sensibility to light seems to reside in the radiated florets, as other similarly formed flowers, such as several of the Aster tribe, the daisy, marigold, &c. exhibit the same tendency, though not in so striking a manner. Many leaves likewise follow the sun, of which a clover-field affords a familiar instance. But the flowers we have enumerated, as they resemble the sun in their form, seem to have a secret sympathy with its beams, in absence of which some will not expand their blossoms at all; while on hot cloudless days they absorb such a quantity of light, that they emit it again in the evening in slight phosphoric flashes. These scintillations were first observed to proceed from the Garden Nasturtion: subsequently M. Haggren, of Sweden, perceiving faint flashes repeatedly darting from a Marigold, extended his ex

aminations, and stated, as the result, that the following flowers emitted flashes more or less vivid, in this order: the Marigold; Garden Nasturtion; Orange Lily; African Marigold; Annual Sun-flower. Bright yellow, or flame colour, seemed in general necessary for the production of the light, for it was never seen on flowers of any other hue. It, would have been well if every plant possessed as appropriate a name as the Helianthus; and if Ovid, in his notice of this flower, had always been equally fortunate in adapting botanical qualities to poetical purposes.

Nature has provided us with various substitutes for watches besides the Sunflower, many others opening and shutting their petals at certain hours of the day, thus constituting what Linnæus calls the horologe, or watch of Flora. He enumerates forty-six which possess this kind of sensibility, dividing them into, 1st, Meteoric flowers, which expand sooner or later, according to the cloudiness, moisture, or pressure of the atmosphere. 2dly, Tropical flowers, opening in the morning and closing in the evening, earlier or later as the length of the day increases or diminishes. 3dly, Equinoctial flowers, which open at a certain and exact hour of the day, and, for the most part, close at another determinate hour. We need not give the list, but can refer to their respective hours of rising and setting, if we encounter any of them in our rambles.

Observe this Pear-tree; in its wild state it has strong thorns, which have entirely disappeared from culture, whence Linnæus denominates such plants

tamed, or deprived of their natural ferocity, as wild animals sometimes lose their horns by domestication. The analogy between vegetable and animal life approaches much nearer than is generally imagined. Recent observation has traced the progress of the sap, from its first absorption by the roots, through the central vessels of the plant, into the annual shoot, leafstalk, and leaf, whence it is returned, and, descending through the bark, contributes to the process of forming the wood; thus describing a course, and fulfilling functions, very nearly correspondent to the circulation of the blood. There is something equivalent to respiration through the whole plant, the leaves principally performing the office of the lungs-it has one series of vessels to receive and convey the alimental juices, answering to the arteries, veins, &c. of animals; and a second set of tracheæ, wherein air is continually received and expelled. It absorbs food regularly, both from the earth and the atmosphere, converting the most vitiated effluvia, in the process of digestion, into the purest air. The vegetable and animal parts of creation are thus a counterbalance to each other, the noxious parts of the one proving salutary food to the other. From the animal body certain effluvia are continually passing off, which vitiate the air, and nothing can be more prejudicial to animal life than their accumulation; while, on the other hand, nothing can be inore favourable to vegetables than these very effluvia, which they accordingly absorb with great avidity, and convert into the purest air. Plants are provided

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