repaired; drains, ditches, etc. kept open; manure is led out; and in particular situations, in favourable weather, a little ploughing is done, and common spring-wheat sown. Fruit-trees are pruned and dug round: hop-grounds trenched, and orchards planted. Timber is felled, and stumps and roots cut up to burn. · Timber trees are planted, and tree-seeds sown.

ANGLING.

Most fresh-water fish are now in season, excepting trout; but being withdrawn to the deepest places, and the weather being generally intensely cold, the water, for the most part, frozen over, the angler in general lies by for better days. Keen sportsmen, however, will be on the watch at all times, and grayling, now reckoned excellent, are sometimes taken in the middle of a bright day, with a grub, or even with a small fly, two descriptions of which, Cotton says, may be taken, or imitated, the redbrown, and bright-dun. \

MIGRATION OF BIRDS.

"The Stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed times; and the Crane, and the Turtle, and the Swallow observe the time of their coming."-JEREMIAH viii. 7.

No living creatures which enliven our landscape by their presence, excite a stronger sympathy in the lovers of nature, than migratory birds. The full charm of change and variety is theirs. They make themselves felt by their occasional absence; and beside this, they interest the imagination by that peculiar instinct which is to them chart and compass, directing their flight over continents and oceans to that one small spot in the great world where Nature has prepared for their reception; which is pilot and captain, warning them away, calling them back, and conducting them in safety on their passage; that degree of mystery, which yet hangs over their motions, notwithstanding the anxious perseverance with which naturalists have investigated the subject; and all the lively and beautiful associations of their cries, and forms, and habits, and resorts. When we think, for a moment, that the swallows, martins and swifts, which sport in our summer skies, and become cohabitants of our houses, will pre

sently be dwelling in the heart of regions which we long, in vain, to know, and whither our travellers toil, in vain, to penetrate, that they will anon affix their nests to the Chinese pagoda, the Indian temple, or, beneath the equator, to the palm-thatched eaves of the African hut; that the small birds which populate our summer hedges and fields will quickly spread themselves with the cuckoo, and its avant courier, the wryneck, over the warm regions beyond the pillars of Hercules, and the wilds of the Levant, of Greece and Syria; the nightingale will be serenading in the chestnut groves of Italy, and the rose-gardens of Persia; that the thrush and the fieldfare, which share our winter, will pour out triumphant music in their native wastes, in the sudden summers of Scandinavia; that even some of the wild fowls which frequent our winter streams will return with the spring, to the far tracts of North America; and when we call to our imagination the desolate rocks in the lonely ocean, the craggy and misty isles of the Orkneys and Shetlands, where others congregate in myriads; or the wild-swan, which sometimes pays a visit to our largest and most secluded waters, rewinging its way through the lofty regions of the air to Ice

land, and other arctic lands, we cannot avoid feeling how much poetry is connected with these wanderers of the earth and air.

I have endeavoured to mark, in a tabular form, the arrivals and departures of this class of birds, in their respective months, in a more clear and complete manner than has hitherto been done.

No migratory birds arrive this month, if we except grosbeaks and silktails, which in this, as in the last, occasionally appear, in very severe weather, as well as flocks of Norway spinks. According to Gilbert White, large flocks of hen chaffinches likewise appear in winter, which are supposed to come from the Continent. This singular circumstance seems difficult of solution.

DEPARTURES.

Nomina.

English names. Go. Come.

Haunts.

Clangula glacialis. Pocher, long-tailed. Jan. 14 Dec. 20 Lakes and shores.

THE GARDEN.

Gardens are amongst the most delightful things which human art has prepared for our recreation and refreshment. To say nothing of the common-places, that a garden was first constructed by God himself,-that in the shades of a glorious garden our first parents were placed by him,—that our Saviour delighted to walk in a garden, that in a garden he suffered his agony, and that in a garden he was buried; there are a thousand reasons why gardens should be highly valued, especially by those who are fond of the country. Lovers of nature cannot always stroll abroad to those beauties and delights which lie scattered far and wide; the physical impediments of time and space-the severities of winter, the dews, the hasty storms, and the strong heats of summer lie between them and their enjoyment, especially if they be of the delicate sex. But into a garden-a spot into which, by the magical power of science, taste, and adventurous enterprize, the sweetest and most beautiful vegetable productions, not only of our own country, but of the whole globe are collected, they may step at all hours, and at all seasons; yes, even through the hours of night,