Story of the Year: With peeps at animated nature

DEAR young friends, I have one object before me in this little book: I want to please and instruct you. The title tells you it is to be a history of the year; not of any particular year, but more or less of every year that rolls along. Not the history of men or nations, or of what comes to pass in any one year; for then I must tell of many great and sad things, of wars and famines and shipwrecks, of murders and pestilence and terrible calamities. As you grow a little older, you will learn much of these sad things: for the history of every year, of all time, since sin came into the world, has been a tale of sickness, sorrow and death, the natural outcome of sin, and of violence, deceit, oppression and cruelty, the outcome of those wicked passions which sin begets. No, beloved readers, not of these things, but I wish to give you a history of some of the beautiful things of nature, or, as I would rather express it, of the works and ways of God, as seen, not in man and his bad ways, but in fields, woods, and streams; in flowers, birds, and insects: in the deep, deep sea, and in the high bright heavens above our heads.

Books, I mean good books, are all well in their place, but I want you to find your best books, and by far your most interesting ones, in the grasses and mosses, the ferns and flowers of the field. Where is not an insect that creeps, not a butterfly or bird that wings its way through the air: not even a bud, or a leaf, or a flower, from which you may not get hours of pleasure. I want you to find your amusements in the beautiful things and the wonderful creatures God has made. Every month will bring out something new. Even the dark gloomy months of winter, which at first might seem barren of all pleasure and instruction, will be found full of profit. Some of you live in the country and have every opportunity of seeing and becoming acquainted with all these works of God. Oh! what a privilege is yours! Others live in crowded cities and smoky towns, and but seldom see the beauties of nature, or the wonders of the works of God. But there is not one who could not find great delight, if he would only use his eyes and ears, whenever he walks abroad. I cannot tell you much, but I want you, dear young friends, to learn for yourselves. What a difference you will find in the trees: their trunks, barks, branches, leaves, and fruit. It is said there are not two blades of grass alike. What an infinite variety of flowers! Insects can scarcely be numbered. Never be afraid of them, rather make them your friends. It is well to learn their names, but to know their habits and their history is far better. All this you can easily learn, though it can only be done by patient perseverance, Once a sturdy man, with pickaxe in hand, stood at the foot of a mountain. To dig down that mountain was his resolve. How was it to be done? “Little by little” was his motto. Let that motto be yours. Martin Luther was once asked how he managed to translate the whole Bible, “Never a day without a verse,” was his quaint reply. At once make a beginning: let not a day pass without adding something to your stock of knowledge, and at once you will begin to reap your reward.

All these things make up a book for God; not His bet book, Oh, no! The Bible is His best book. Everything in the world, even in nature, tells the sad tale of sin, but God’s best book tells of His best gift to this poor world, even the gift of eternal life to such poor sinners as you and I, and this life is in His Son. But “the things that are made” tell us of God too; and I trust this story of the year will give us many a rich lesson as to His “eternal power and godhead.”

January.

ALL of you are aware that the opening year finds us in the very midst of winter. The days are short, gloomy, and dark. Some, thinking only of the drizzly rain, the bleak winds, the driving tempests, or the blinding snows and pinching cold, may imagine there is no pleasure like that of a warm room and a blazing fire. Quite true, many days in January are altogether uncomfortable. The cold sleet drives in your face, the winds howl about your head, and if forced to face the storm you are glad soon to find a shelter, But this is not all misfortune. It is good even for children sometimes to battle with the tempest. You will find life itself will have its winters. You will have to pass through many a storm. The winds of adversity will rise where least expected, and beat and drive about your path.

It will be well for you in your early days if you learn to brace yourself for the conflict, and now and then face and battle with the fierce elements of a winter’s storm.

Shall I tell you, boys, of one such struggle in the morning of my own life? Many winters have come and gone since then, but the memory of that conflict is as fresh as ever. Christmas Eve was just approaching; I was then an orphan lad, and on that night I was about to start a fifteen mile journey across a wild country, to spend a holiday with a beloved widowed mother. You may not yet have learned the intense joy of such a moment. The morning broke with flakes of snow, descending with all that gentleness that makes such a scene one of the most beautiful in nature. It continued quietly falling all day, and all day the prospect of that journey got darker and darker. But I was young, vigorous, and strong, and my young love laughed at difficulties. The church bells had chimed their ninth hour as I passed from the busy town to the quiet of a country lane. For an hour or two it seemed easy work to wade through the feathery light laid snow; but dark clouds began to gather thick and black; a low moaning sound came melancholy through the leafless trees, then a fitful gust, and soon a howling tempest came headlong on. The heavy clouds rapidly disgorged their feathery load. Fast and blinding the snow seemed to come from all points, and then began the struggle not easily to be forgotten. Certainly, not in England have I seen such a night since then. At every gate or opening in the hedge, the driving wind drifted the snow completely across the country lane. Many times I found myself up to the middle before I could break through the drift. Except the raging storm, not a sound was to be heard, save now and then a farmer’s dog seemed to join in the howl of the tempest. But on and on I struggled; once or twice the dim light from a lonely cottage window tried my courage, and tempted me to beg for shelter, but the joy of a waiting mother’s welcome, and the conviction that even if I stayed all night the snow would still have to be faced (for no coach could travel then), I renewed my failing strength, and on I battled with the storm.

Many a time that night did I lift up my heart to God that He would guide my feet, and keep me from the many deep places by the way side now filled up with snow, into which I might have fallen and perished long before any trace of my whereabouts could have been found. And God, who just before that had saved me from a worse storm—even the storm of divine judgment against my sins—brought me safely through; for after many a rest by the way, and many a failing heart, after eight long hours of terrible struggle, home, sweet comfortable home, was reached at last. I have never forgotten that night, but I have often felt it was not in vain to have had one’s energies and strength and courage tested even to the utmost. So, young friends, if you find the storm beating about your head in the cold bleak days of January, battle with it, and be determined to conquer.

But when the ground is thickly covered with snow, and there is a hard, dry frost, what is more pleasant than to wander through the fields and woods, and what more beautiful than the snow-laden trees, the frozen pools and ice-bound streams?

There are not many wild animals in our country. Wolves, bears, seals, and venomous serpents have long since been exterminated. But where now are the moles, squirrels, hedgehogs, porcupines, field-mice, snakes, lizards, frogs, and bats? Do you know that many of these burrow deep holes in the ground, others find snug sheltered spots in the trees, fall fast asleep, and will remain there for days and weeks without food. What a study for you to find out which they are, and how they manage to live so long in a state of torpor and without food. Should the sun shine warm in the middle of the day, some of these you see frisking about pleased that their nap is over, but the moment the night frost comes, away they go to their holes again.

So, too, is it with the birds, especially when the ground is covered with snow, they are not much to be seen. I often wonder how they all find food, but then God remembers every one. How bold they become at this time; the most timid will come and ask for a few crumbs. I need not tell you of the robin with his quick bright eye: he sings through all weathers. The lark, the thrush, and blackbird will give us a song only on the warmest days. Then you may be amused to see the sparrows picking up straws and hopping in and out of their little holes as if Spring had come, but they soon find out their mistake. The rook, jackdaw, blackbird and thrush will sometimes even have young ones by the end of January.

What too, has become of all insect life? Scarce one is to be seen. Slugs, snails, bees, and butterflies are rarely n ever seen. Now and then, on an extra warm day, you may chance to see an odd one.

And what shall we say about vegetable life? Even in winter you will find many plants putting forth their leaves, and many a little flower too, peeping out, as the snowdrop, the primrose, and some others. But, young friends, on every dry frosty day, sally forth and for yourselves find out much more than I can put on paper, and to see, and hear, and handle, you will find much more interesting, I can tell you.

February.

“OH,” says some little boy, “I know why you put Fill-dyke to February; it is because there is so much rain in this to month.” Yes; it is a cold, dreary month, and there are “black frosts” and a few “white frosts,” and the thaws are colder than either. In the great City of London, and in all large towns, there is little else but rain and sleet and mud, and nearly all little boys and girls often wish spring and summer would come again. But many of my young readers live in the country, and dreary as the month is, let us see if we cannot find at least a little pleasure in watching the movements of nature, of the beasts and birds and insects—the plants, flowers, and animals.

Towards the end of this month, except the winter is very late, everything that can run or fly begins to be full of activity, and the plants even begin to peep forth, as if to prepare for the long, bright, warm days of May and June. Now you will soon discover, when walking in the fields and woods and on fine sunny mornings, that the mice and squirrels, and other small animals that creep away into the ground and holes of trees, and fall into a long sleep when winter first comes in, have begun to wake up and to frisk about, as much as to say how glad they are the winter is coming to a close. And you have all seen the long lines of fresh earth thrown up in the meadows, especially by the side of trees and dry banks; and here and there you will find little heaps of fine mold, fresh and beautiful. What can they mean? If you were to dig under them you would find the little moles wide awake and busy at work, preparing snug nests for their little ones. The bat, too, will now be seen to flit about in the evening, snapping up any little insect; and the owl, that funny-faced bird, will be heard making his queer hooting noise; and if several very sunny days should come together, on some warm bank you might even see a snake curled up, staring at you with his sharp bright eyes, and with a hiss and shooting out his tongue, the moment he sees you, off he glides into his hole again.

How beautiful it is to watch all these movements, and to look into the rippling streams, and see even the tiny fish begin to glide about as though they, too, had found out that winter was soon to pass away, and the merry sunbeams were about to sparkle on the waters, and make all things dance with joy.

But it is amongst our little friends the birds that we especially see fresh activity and life. Swarms of last year’s young ones fly about, and God Himself teaches them the time has come to find their mates and to think of bringing up families of their own. It is then, on some morning, warmer than usual,

“Up springs the lark,

Shrill-voiced and loud, the messenger of morn

Ere yet the shadows fly, he mounted sings

Amid the dawning clouds, and from their haunts

Calls forth the tuneful nations.”

And the loud-toned thrush, with his long and varied notes, may now too be heard, mounted to the very tip-top branch of some still bare tree. What varied beauties, and how much instruction can my little country friends gather up, if you are careful observers, even in dreary February, of all these movements. Who has not watched the robin and the wren and the woodcock—the hedge-sparrow, the linnet, and many others, as they seem to lure us to the fields, and gladden us with their sweet varied melody? Plants, birds, fishes, and trees, all tell us that the old and never-failing promise of God is again about to be fulfilled— that after dreary, dark, cold winter, springtime, with all its beauty, is about to come again.

Especially watch your little friends as tenderly they make love one to another. How winning are their little ways! and as a poet so beautifully says:

“’Tis love creates their melody, and all

This waste of music is the voice of love:

That even to birds and beasts the tender arts

Of pleasing teaches. Hence the glossy kind

Try every winning way inventive love

Can dictate, and in courtship to their mates

Pour forth their little souls.”

What a lesson for young and old! Is it always our greatest delight to please all around us?

But music is not all; there is real hard work. How busy they all become building their nests—hurrying about carrying off long straws, feathers, bits of wool plucked from the backs of sheep, and anything soft, with which to make their nests soft lima warm The beautiful buds, too, now break forth; and the pretty snowdrops, and bright crocuses, and the daffodils begin to peep out; and, especially if the spring be early, the thick clusters of the primrose are seen on every sunny bank.

One more thought and we must say good-bye till March’s rough winds begin to blow. The farmer now becomes most busy; he cuts down his hedges, lays his manure on the ground, and as soon as the frost permits, at once he begins to plow up his ground and cast in his seed. But generally this kind of work comes more into March than February.

How can we think of all these beautiful things without remembering Him who has made them all. Dear little ones, think of it, God knows every bud that breaks forth; He feeds every bird that sings, and teaches every one to build its nest.

Some may tell you it is nature that teaches them all these things. Believe them not. It is God Himself—the same loving God that gave His Son the Lord Jesus to die for as poor sinners—that makes and feeds and teaches every one.

Approach of Spring.

And see where surly Winter passes off,

Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts,

His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,

The shattered forest, and the ravaged vale;

While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch,

Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,

The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.

As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,

And winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,

Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets

Deform the day delightless; so that scarce

The bittern knows his time, with bill ingulfed,

To shake the sounding marsh; or from the shore

The plovers when to scatter o’er the heath,

And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.

March.

IT is truly said that March “comes in like a lion,” yet with it comes the bright hope of spring. If today dark clouds or thick fogs hide the morning sun and shut out his genial warmth; or the winds whistle and a terrible storm drives headlong the black clouds above, tearing up stubborn old trees that have stood the blast of a hundred years, and brings them to the ground with a crash that makes the very earth to tremble, tomorrow the whole heavens may be clear and bright, the sun may greet you with his cheery rays, and you may joyfully exclaim, “Spring has really come at last.”

In natural things as in spiritual, HOPE is a blessed gift. When the storms roar and the tempests howl; or the cold rain and sleet make you a prisoner in the house, Horn whispers, “A few more boisterous days or weeks at most, and all will be changed, the sky will be serene, the air mild, and the warm rays of the sun once more clothe the earth with her long lost beauty.”

When you grow a few years older you will find life very much like a boisterous spring. Sorrows and trials, and deep griefs, as well as pleasures and joys, may be your lot, but if you have heard the voice of the Lord Jesus speaking to your own heart, perhaps in its bitterest moments, and saying, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” oh, what a link that will make between Him and your soul, and what a bright blessed HOPE will He Himself become in your little hearts!

But once more to the lanes and woods and fields. Don’t forget I desire most of all that you should use well your own eyes and ears; and if I tell you a few things you may see or hear, there is no end of beautiful wonders to find out—sights and sounds, every one of which will give you real pleasure, and profit too, if you will closely observe.

Unless the season is very late you will find everything that has life now full of activity; seeds begin to open out; branches which seemed dead put forth tender buds, and the beautiful green grass everywhere springs up out of the earth. We see all nature preparing to restore verdure to the fields, leaves to the trees, and the long-lost flowers to the gardens.

All the winter sleepers are now awake and busily at work. What a pleasure it would give you to find out all the birds that are truly English, that is, that live and die here; and then the insects and small animals and birds too, that creep into holes and corners, and sleep away all the cold days and nights of winter; and to find out those birds that come flying across the seas with spring, are our cheerful visitors all the summer, build their nests, rear their young, and then fly away to warmer lands when autumn’s cold winds begin to blow.

You have all listened to the croaking of the frogs. What a queer continuous half musical sound it is! On marshy grounds it is heard in all directions.

Once I passed through a long dreary swamp in America. There these croakers grow much larger than with us: they seemed to be there in millions, and for miles the sound was perfectly distracting. What amusement it will give you to watch them splashing and swimming in the ponds, and then remaining quite still and staring at you with their great eyes!

Soon you will see curious clusters of jelly-looking matter containing little black spots. If you put some of this into a vessel of water, in a short time you will see it turn into little tadpoles; and what boy has not watched these funny creatures with their thick heads and wagging tails, change their shape: first come out two front legs, then two hind ones, then they seem to lose their tail and change their head, and at last they come out perfect little frogs.

The picture you have before you will give a good idea of this curious change. First, you see the tadpole pure, without any legs, only a small fin near its head, something like a fish; then the fin is dropped and a couple of little legs appear in front; then you see the little fellow, looking as important as a boy when he gets his first pair of trousers on, and he is looking at the great full-grown frog as though he would soon be as big as he.

But hark! what is that little clear distinct sound, tap, tap, tap; tap, tap, tap, exactly like the sharp stroke of a very small hammer? By diligently following the sound you will find a beautifully colored bird clinging not very elegantly to the trunk of a tree. His head is upwards, and slowly he marches, on goes his bill peck, peck, peck, and you wonder whatever he is after. Well, his peculiar work has given him the name of Woodpecker. He has two objects before him—to find sleeping insects on which he feeds, and then to find a suitable place for a nest. Insects are found in decayed trees, and he works from tree to tree till he finds either a tree or part of one where insects have eaten into its very heart. The Woodpecker has a strong wedge-shaped bill, and a long hair-tipped tongue. With the former he pierces the decayed wood, where he finds quantities of insects, and with the latter he sweeps them into his mouth.

The Woodpecker has been called a clever carpenter, because of the peculiar nest he builds. Having discovered a suitable spot, he cuts out a perfectly circular hole in the solid wood, he works downwards in a standing direction for about seven inches, and then straight down for about twelve inches more.

We present you here with a beautiful illustration of how the Woodpecker carries on his work. The one on the right hand you see is clinging to the tree; he is not in the act of picking, but looking as if he were descending tail first; for it is a curious fact that when he comes down the tree he never turns round, but always keeps his head upwards and runs down backwards.

As to the female bird, half out and half in the entrance to her nest, you must suppose a slice cut out of the side of the tree in order to show you the nice snug little nest at the bottom.

The opening is just large enough to admit the body of the bird, but inside it is much larger. Both male and female work at this, and when it is completed and the nest made, the female lays six beautifully white eggs.

Perhaps this is the month, especially towards the end, when all English birds sing most sweetly, and it is the time when they are the most busy; not an idler is to be found, and the harder they work the sweeter they sing. If you want to find pleasure in the woods, the fields and lanes, get to know the thrush, robin, wren, hedge-sparrow, the linnet, goldfinch, and blackbird. Each has its peculiar song, and every one has its own ways and habits, from which, but specially in nest building and brood rearing, you will find something to learn as well as to please.

But not the birds only are busy, insects innumerable are called out by the increasing warmth of the sun. Bees too, and there are many kinds of them begin their ingenious and useful labors. Wasps, butterflies, gnats, spiders, beetles, and moths are also busy by night and by day, for they too at this time, like the birds, have to provide for their young.

And how much might I not say about the gardens, and their flowers and shrubs: sowing of seeds, planting of bulbs and dressing of beds!

Here is plenty of work, and pleasure too, for every spare moment, and then there are the frisking lambs, and the busy labors of the farmer and his men m the fields; sowing of seed and manuring of land In short the toils of the year have began in real earnest, and the bird or insect or man that toils not now will suffer loss all the year round.

And remember this is your springtime, and your whole life will be shaped by what you now do or neglect to do.

Sowing in Spring.

Joyous, the impatient husbandman perceives

Relenting Nature, and his lusty steers

Drives from their stalls, to where the well-used plow

Lies, in the furrow, loosened from the frost.

There, unrefusing, to the harnessed yoke

They lend their shoulder, and begin their toil,

Cheered by the simple song and soaring lark.

While through the neighboring fields the sower

stalks,

With measured step, and liberal throws the grain

Into the faithful bosom of the ground,

The harrow follows harsh, and shuts the scene.

Be gracious, Heaven! for now laborious man

Has done his part. Ye fostering breezes, blow

Ye softening dews, ye tender showers descend

And temper all, thou world-reviving sun,

Into the perfect year!

April.

MIGRATION OF ANIMALS AND BIRDS.

“FOR, lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the turtle is heard in our land.” —Song of Sol. 2:11, 12.

“Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming.” —Jer. 8:7.

“SWEET April, hail! with cheerful tone

I bid thee welcome; not alone,

Because thou com’st and bring’st along

The sight, and smell, and tuneful song,

Of leaf, and flowers of various hue,

And many a feathered warbler new:—

But that thou wak’st the grateful thought

To us by holy scripture taught,

That when these pleasant things are o’er,

Things bright and glorious are in store,

In God’s own heavenly home above;—

For those that trust Him, and that love,

Too bright for human thought to seem,

Too glorious for the heart of man!”

APRIL begins the most delicious season of the whole year. It may have fitful showers, or a slight crisp frost, but the sun shines brightly, the air is warm and cheerful, and nearly every day we may sally forth into the now beautiful green fields and verdant lanes. Wonders everywhere crowd upon us in April. Earth, air, and water, alike provide amusement and instruction. It would be impossible to turn up a sod, to examine a single pool of water, or to watch the thousands of winged insects, flies, or birds, that sport in the air, without seeing marvelous proofs of the wisdom, the goodness, and the daily care of God, without whose knowledge not even a sparrow falls to the ground.

The migration of birds is one of the most marked wonders of this month. Let us have a little talk about this. You never see the swallows flit about, nor do you ever hear the sweet musical note of the cuckoo in the winter. Why is this?

Well, all over the world, certain animals, fishes, birds, and insects change their place of abode, some occasionally, and for reasons which no one, as yet, has been able to find out, but most at stated times.

Now, I can tell you very little about this in a short paper; but it is one of those subjects about which I wish you to get all the information you possibly can. Only I would rather you got ever so little by the use of your own ears, eyes, and hands than ever so much by simply reading books. Someday, if the Lord Jesus should tarry and not call away His saints to be with Himself, I will try and give you some help, as to how best to examine little pools and plants and flowers, and what tools will help you, but this month, as I said, we will have a talk about this wonderful migration of beasts, birds, fishes, and insects.

The Bison, or Buffaloes of America travel hundreds of miles every year. The way of it is very wonderful. When the time comes one of their number, the largest and fiercest of the tribe, suddenly seems to become frantic; his roarings resound through the valleys, vast herds gather round him; then, with great excitement, shaking his long shaggy mane, he lowers his head to the ground and lifts up his back like a mountain; at the same time a dull sound, the signal of departure, issues from his deep chest, when off he starts at a furious rate, followed by thousands. Travelers tell us the sight is terrible to behold. Bearing down every obstacle in their way, and having got on the full swing, it is impossible to stop themselves; and many weak ones and all the stumbling ones are trodden to death.

The migration of squirrels, in countries where they are very plentiful, is also wonderful. When the time comes they start in numbers that you could not count; and when they come to a river in their wanderings, each one will search out a fragment of wood, and turning it into a little vessel, and pushing it into the water, will raise his bushy tail and the whole company will soon be wafted across the river.

There is a still smaller animal, called a Lemming, in Lapland, which comes down from the mountains in troops so numerous that part of the country for a large space is covered as with a moving mass. Neither rivers, lakes, nor arms of the sea, stop their progress. Not even the efforts of the inhabitants, who regard them as a plague, nor the war waged against them by enemies, such as foxes, fish, and carnivorous birds, which destroy them in immense numbers as they march to their destination in search of new homes, can stop their progress.

Amongst the fishes, the herrings are perhaps the most remarkable emigrants. They are generally supposed to come from the northern or polar seas; and it is thought they divide into two great columns; one ad, advancing towards Ireland, and skirting the shores of America; the other taking an opposite direction along the shores of Norway, some going on to the Baltic, and some to the south of France and England. It is scarcely possible to give you a just idea of the enormous Shoals that traverse the seas, and the quantities yearly taken for food. In Scotland alone, in one year, near a million barrels, each holding 700 herrings, were caught and cured.

You have all heard of the swarms of locusts. In Africa and Asia they fly in such masses as to be like immense clouds. The track they pass over seems as if it had been wasted by fire; not a trace of verdure is left behind. You will remember what Moses relates of the dreadful plague of locusts in the land of Egypt. Words fail to tell what devastation they produce. Throughout all history, ancient and modern, we read of the desolations produced by them. The squirrels, the lemmings, and the locusts, however, do not regularly make these migrations. If they were as constant as some of the birds and fishes, they would cause the destruction of all human food wherever they visited.

No one can tell you with certainty why all these make such changes. Some may do it for food, some for warmth, some for safety while they rear their young. All we can certainly say is, that God has given to each such feelings, which men call instinct, as prompt them at a given time to start a journey of hundreds or even thousands of miles. They seem to know exactly where they are going, and will cross the ocean, or long deserts and trackless prairies, with the utmost accuracy, never losing their way, but arriving at the very spot they had before left.

But let us look a little more closely at the migration of our special friends, the birds, that make our summers so cheerful with their songs.

The swallow is perhaps the best known and most interesting. There are several kinds, a little different in shape, size, and song, but all visit us in the spring and leave us in the autumn. One curious fact is, they gather in great companies when they leave our shores, but they are never seen so to return. About the second week in April you will see an odd one or so, and in a few days they will be whirling above our heads in vast numbers, but no one can tell how or whence they came.

The swallow is a favorite with all. One has well said “He gladdens my sense of seeing as much as any other does my sense of hearing. He is the joyous prophet of the year—the harbinger of the best season; he lives a life of enjoyment amongst the loveliest forms of nature; winter is unknown to him; and he leaves the green meadows of England in autumn for the myrtle and orange groves of Italy, and for the palms of Africa.”

“Welcome, welcome feathered stranger,

Now the sun bids nature smile;

Safe arrived and free from danger,

Welcome to our blooming isle!”

What a proof are these beautiful wanderers of the care of our God over the least of His creatures I They live entirely upon insects, and as the insect tribes either die or remain torpid in the winter, He who made and cares for them warns them that they must leave the place which can no longer supply them with food.

Then when the warmth of spring hatches the insects’ eggs and brings out millions of tiny creatures into the sunshine, the same Divine and gracious hand leads them to their former home again.

There are four kinds come to this country. The chimney swallow, which arrives about twenty days before the others, gets its name from the fact that it builds its nest inside chimneys, four or six feet from the top. Next comes the martin or house swallow, a smaller bird, which builds its nest under the eaves of houses, rows of which I have no doubt you have all seen. From the fact that he builds his house of earth which he is able to moisten and cement together in a clever manner, he is sometimes called the mason builder.

The sand swallow is the least of its tribe, and builds its nest in holes in sand pits, and in the banks of rivers. These are marvels of industry, penetrating some feet deep into the banks. Last, comes the steeple swift, the largest of his kind, his length of wing being near eighteen inches, and yet it is said he weighs not more than one ounce. This is the swallow that scarcely ever lights on the ground. His feet are very small, and to walk or rise from the ground seems to him very difficult. He is constantly on the wing, and he is said to fly at the rate of sixty miles an hour for ten hours a day. You will easily know him by his size, and especially by his loud shrill scream. He builds under the eaves of houses or in lofty steeples, The following interesting story is told by the celebrated Baron Cuvier about two swallows, which so interested him that he became most devoted to the study of birds.

One morning, when he was a young man and tutor in a family, he observed two swallows building a nest in the outer angle of his small casement; the male bringing moist clay in his beak, which the hen kneaded together, and with straws and bits of hay formed their cozy home. As soon as the framework was completed, the pair hastened to line the interior with feathers, wool, and dried leaves; and then, winging their flight to a neigh-bottling wood, they continued absent for several days.

As, however, the nest was in course of building, two sparrows looked on with great curiosity, and no sooner had the swallows departed, than they took possession of the vacant domicile, always leaving one on the watch, with his sturdy bill protruding through the entrance.

At length the swallows returned, when the cock made an indignant attack on the intruders, only, alas! to endure a bleeding head and ruffled feathers; and so, after a short colloquy with his mate perched on a green bough, they withdrew again together.

On the return of the hen sparrow, the young tutor thought that her husband gave her an account of the attack and the repulse, over which they chuckled; and then he saw them sally forth and store up a large stock of provisions, with two beaks ready to defend the entrance.

But now cries resounded in the air; crowds of swallows began to assemble on the roof; in the midst he perceived the expelled builders, recounting their wrongs to each fresh arrival; and before long two hundred of these birds were assembled. Suddenly a host of them flew against the nest—still defended by the two sturdy beaks—each having his bill filled with mud, which he discharged against the entrance, and then gave place to another to follow up the assault; this they so managed to accomplish as to keep at a short distance from the nest, and be out of the reach of the besieged sparrows. The swallows now heaped mud on the nest till it was completely covered, and but for the desperate efforts of the sparrows, who contrived to shake off some of the pellets, the opening would have been soon quite choked up. But brief indeed was the interval; for a party of the swallows perched on the nest, smoothed and pressed down the clay over the opening, and soon hermetically closed it; when loud cries arose of vengeance and victory.

Another work was yet to be done. The swallows hurried away for fresh materials; of these they constructed a nest over the blocked-up entrance, and in two hours it was occupied by the ejected swallows. No wonder the young tutor looked on with increasing interest: he observed the development of the young brood; the male bird teaching them how to seize their prey in the air; how to fly high when all was still, and the flies sported aloft; and how to keep near the ground when a storm was coming, for then all insects seek a shelter.

So passed the summer, and autumn came. Crowds of swallows once more assembled on the roof of the chateau; the little birds were placed with other little birds in the midst of the troop; and ere long they all took flight towards the east.

Spring came, and two swallows, lean and with ruffled feathers, came with it, and were recognized as the parents of last year’s brood; they repaired and re-lined the nest, and then set out on an excursion as in the previous season. The morning after their return, a hawk pounced suddenly on the cock, and would have borne him away had not the young tutor mortally wounded the assailant with a fowling-piece. The swallow was seriously wounded by the talons of the hawk, and a grain or two of shot had grazed his breast and broken one wing, but the kind young man dressed his wounds, and replaced him in the nest, while the poor hen fluttered sadly around her mate, uttering piercing cries of distress. In spite of every attention, he soon died; from that moment the hen never left her nest, refused the food that was constantly offered her, and expired five days after her beloved mate.

There are many other birds that leave us in the winter, as the cuckoo, woodcock, wood pigeon, the nightingale and several others; but I fear I have already tired you with the length of my paper, and so must say good-bye bill the merry month of May.

Beauties of Spring

The hawthorn whitens; and the juicy groves

Put forth their buds, unfolding by degrees,

Till the whole leafy forest stands displayed

In full luxuriance to the sighing gales,

Where the deer rustle through the twining brake,

And the birds sing concealed. At once arrayed

In all the colors of the flushing year,

By Nature’s swift and secret-working hand,

The garden glows and fills the liberal air

With lavish fragrance; while the promised fruit

Lies yet a little embryo unperceived

Within its crimson folds. Now from the town

Buried in smoke, and sleep, and noisome damps;

Oft let me wander o’er the dewy fields,

Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling

drops

From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze

Or sweet-brier hedges I pursue my walk;

Or taste the smell of dairy; or ascend

~~~ Some eminence.

And see the country, far diffused around.

One boundless blush, one white empurpled shower

Of mingled blossoms.

May.

THE BEAUTIES OF SPRING.

“MAY is the very month of mirth!

And if there be a time on earth

When things below may seem to vie

In beauty with the things on high

‘Tis in this sweetest vernal time,

While yet the year is in its prime,

And all is fresh, and fair, and gay,

And sparkling with the smiles of May.”

AH, says one of my young friends, it is very pleasant to read your poetic descriptions of the merry month of May, but I live in the crowded streets of London, and scarcely ever see a green field. And another says, What about May in murky Manchester, or gloomy Glasgow, or busy Birmingham, or smoky Sheffield, with their fiery black furnaces, and long belching chimneys vomiting forth nothing but thick clouds of smoke?

Well, even then, with all these drawbacks, what child does not welcome the long bright sunny days of May? But if even your home is there, I want to entice you now and again, yea, as often as possible, to get outside of those overgrown cities. Even from the largest of them, a long walk, or a few minutes’ ride behind the iron horse would bring every one of you to the beautiful rippling streams, with their overhanging banks, covered with our simple pretty wildflowers. If you can be persuaded once to wend your way through the winding lanes, with hedges covered with the sweet-smelling May flower, the rich-scented honey-suckle, and the simple hedge rose—if I can induce you to drink in that delicious fragrance and freshness in the air which everywhere prevails, and is felt only in spring, I think you would get such a love for the country that you would often be found there; and that, not to spend idle hours, but to search into the history and habits of all those beautiful flowers, and birds, and insects, and trees, and a hundred other things which God has made.

How I wish I could ramble with you in the sweet evening hour, when every bush and every tree resounds with song; now through the waving cornfields, over which, high in the heavens, the lark warbles forth her evening song; now through the groves, where the nightingale loves to pour out his varied thrilling notes; now through the golden meadows, with the crowfoot sparkling all around; now over commons, where the furze blossoms in all its golden hues; then to wander over high hills, and from some overhanging cliff gaze on the wide-stretching scene, the winding valley, and the silvery river gliding on to its home, with the cattle, like mere specks, quietly feeding by the still waters, or, having supplied every need, lying down, the very picture of contentment, in the green pastures!

How the thought brings up many a walk outside even flat smoky Manchester, and black Sheffield, whose outskirts abound with scenes of rustic beauty, and the rich fields of Doncaster, and the wooded lanes about Westbury, in Wiltshire; and the sometimes wild and sometimes beautiful scenery of Wales; but more especially, and never-to-be-forgotten, the beautiful banks of the Tay, the rich fields above Perth, the magnificent scene from the mighty cliff of Kinnole, the glory of Scotland; and the almost enchanting scenes in the wild but richly-verdant Pass of Killiecrankie.

Voyage on the Mississippi River.

Once, but now many years ago, I steamed near two thousand miles up the far-famed, wide, and magnificent Mississippi river, and after that, many hundred miles up the beautiful winding Ohio, and then up the Illinois river, through the wide-spreading prairies of the States of America. It was early in spring, and much as I loved the scene, how impossible it would be to describe its beauties to you. Slavery was then in full force, and for hundreds of miles on each side of the dark rolling river were to be seen the white-washed huts of the slaves, surrounded by the magnificent verdure of an almost tropical sun. The stately southern villa, with its open verandah white as snow, nestled in the woods; and then the overhanging trees along nearly the whole length of the Ohio, and the almost innumerable wild prairie flowers, and the lovely wild vine climbing to the top of the highest tree and dropping down in rich festoons: here were beauties of spring never to be forgotten.

But as a set-off to all this, how shall I describe my sadness, when I first saw a gang of slaves? It was night; the steam tug had not towed our ship many miles up the river when we stopped by the side of a dense forest to take in wood for the boiler fires. In a moment a long file of stalwart men, black as ebony, each bearing a log on his shoulder, came on board. For near two months I had not set foot on dry land, and great was the pleasure once again to step on shore. Scarcely had I done so when the thought first flashed across my mind, These poor blacks are slaves doomed to bondage as long as they shall live! Great fires were blazing, and strange indeed did their black features and almost naked limbs look in the lurid glare of those flames. I cannot describe the kind of awe with which I gazed for the first time upon men that could be bought and sold and whipped like cattle. Beautiful indeed was the spring scenery along the whole of those rivers, but I could never forget that the black spot of slavery was there.

The Singing of Birds.

It is not till the latter end of May, that all the trees are covered with beautiful green leaves. The sturdy old oaks are about the very last. The few warm days of March did not seem to move the sap in their rough trunks. April’s soft tears and gentle showers failed to bring out the buds; but when merry laughing May, with its bright and burning sun, comes dancing along, nothing can withstand its warmth, and outburst the beautiful foliage even of the gnarled tardy old oak.

What a busy scene everywhere meets us in spring. Now is the time when you will find the field mice and rabbits preparing burrows for their young. The winged tribes, with unwearying labor are feeding their nestlings; the last of our summer visitors now come. The swallows are most active, even in the hottest part of the day, dashing along at the top of their speed.

Now the melody of the birds never stops, night or day. When all others are tired out, the nightingale sends forth his sweetest, loudest notes. Insects, and butterflies, and moths, and beetles are most plentiful. Bees, and wasps, and grasshoppers, and that speck of light, the glow worm, are now to be seen. The wild flowers come out fresh every day. What rich pleasure it would give you to find out all their names, and compare their beauties and their rich perfumes! And then the flowery bushes in the lanes are nearly all out, the honeysuckle, the rose, the wild apple, and the hawthorns may, with hosts of others. Towards the end of May the chestnut is in its greatest glory; and if my young London friends wish to feast on a sight they will never forget, one of the most beautiful in all nature, let them take at this time a trip to Bushey Park, and see perhaps the finest avenue of chestnut trees in the world.

But what shall I say of our gardens and orchards? To give a list of names of trees, and flowers, and plants, and fruits, would help but little. Learn them for yourselves, and let the flowers become your pets, and if your heart is right, that blessed One who said, “Behold the lilies of the field,” will teach you many a solemn useful lesson from them all.

Dark Clouds in May.

And yet bright and beautiful as May generally is, sometimes a dark cloud will gather; a storm of wind and rain, and even frost and snow, will suddenly cast a winter’s gloom over all nature. How like to life is this! Yes, says some little sorrowful heart, already I have known something just like that. A little time ago, in our family, all was so bright, there was not a cloud to be seen. Little one, well do I know what you mean. You had a loving mother, and a kind father, and brothers and sisters were all so happy. What a bright spring morning was that! But sickness came, that loving mother was laid low; with gentle footsteps and bated breath you trod about the house; day by day hope grew fainter, until at length she died, and then a heavy crushing sorrow fell like an avalanche on your path. That was indeed a dark storm on a bright day. Dear sorrowing one, do you know that the Lord Jesus was once a little child, and had sorrows just like you, and He never forgets, like us who are grown old, a single trial He passed through as a child. He loves little children, He died that He might save them, and whether you have had such a trouble, or it is still in store for you, I want to tell you that if you lift up your heart to Him, and tell out all your sorrow and that deeper thing which is worse than sorrow, the sin of your heart, He will take the sadness away, and make you brighter and happier than ever before, and He will take care of you too, till He brings you to His own happy home,

“Where everlasting spring abides,

And never-withering dowers.”

June.

The Metamorphosis of Insects.

JUNE with its bright long days, and nights almost as bright, has swiftly and imperceptibly come upon us. It was but the other day and we were rejoicing that winter, with its frost, and snow, and fogs, and rains would soon be past; we hailed the first few gleams of bright sunshine as the harbinger of sweet spring. How soon it came, and with what joy we watched the springing of plants in hedgerow, field and wood; how we rejoiced to see the first bursting forth of leaf buds, the opening of the early flowers, and to listen to the singing of the birds. But spring has all gone and we are almost in the full blaze of all the glories of summer, lovely blue skies, warm, delicious days; the fields and lanes and trees are all covered with richest verdure; but in the midst of all its glories, one cannot but think how rapidly it has come, and the thought will creep over the mind, how soon it will be gone! Yes, spring is short, summer is short, autumn is short; yea the whole year is quickly gone; and shall we forget, dear children, that LIFE itself is short, and it too will soon be past and gone? How surely, loved ones, will you find this out I It seems but yesterday that, like many of you, I was but a little child, frolicsome and thoughtless, and like the gay butterfly sipping at every pleasant thing, and I can scarcely believe that since then near threescore summers have passed away. How beautiful, and needful too, is the prayer, “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

We might take a rapid survey of the activities of all living nature, animals, birds, insects, butterflies; the wonderful care and labor with which they feed and tend their young; and all the changes in flowers, shrubs, and trees; but as butterflies and moths are amongst the most prominent and interesting objects of this month shall we look a little minutely into the wonderful changes they pass through, from the time they first burst their little eggs till they die? Are you aware that not a single insect is born with wings? It does not get them till it has gone through several wonderful changes. Those who write big books on insects call these changes “the Met-a-mor-pho-sis of insects.” This is a long word, but it simply means a change of shape. I have no doubt the youngest of you know that the beautiful butterfly was once what some might think an ugly-looking grub or caterpillar. Now these pass through four states, which are called the EGG state, the CATERPILLAR state, the PUPA or CHRYSALIS state, and the IMAGO or perfect state.

Nearly all animals and birds take care of their young till they are able to care for themselves. Very few insects ever live to see their young. But the provision made by insects for their future little ones is one of the most remarkable features in all natural history. First the eggs have to be preserved from many dangers, some of them through the whole winter; then how are the young to procure food the moment they are hatched? The parent before it dies provides for both with such labor and skill as are perfectly astonishing.

For example, you have all seen around the twig of some fruit tree a number of beautiful little pearly bracelets; each of these circles contains from two hundred to three hundred eggs, which have been laid by a small moth, called the Lackey Moth. We give herewith a little engraving, that you may be better able to recognize what we refer to. They are a pretty sight on many a branch in the orchards, and you may have often seen them without thinking or knowing that every little pearl would in due time send forth a beautiful winged insect. All these eggs are fast glued to the twig, and not only that, but between the rows and over the eggs is deposited a thin coat of tenacious or fast-sticking gum, which secures the eggs from many insects that would gladly eat them up, and also protects them from rain and frost through the long winter months. There they remain in perfect safety till the warm suns of spring bring them to life. We give also the appearance of butterfly eggs, only you must know they are greatly magnified.

The Gnat builds an ingenious little boat, which is made entirely of its own eggs and a glutinous composition. Every egg if placed alone in the water would immediately sink, but with great skill and labor it fastens them together in the shape of a little boat, which no disturbance in the water can sink. When the boat is finished away flies the gnat and leaves it to its fate, floating on the water.

Some moths preserve their eggs by covering them with hair stripped from their own bodies, of which they are provided with a great quantity. Others, again, like the dragonfly, deposit their eggs in the water, where the insect remains most of its life, and passes through all its changes but the last. When the appointed time comes it makes its way to the surface, throws off its old garment, and soars away into the air.

As soon as the insect is hatched it is then called LARVA. If it has no feet it is called in common language a worm or maggot; if it has feet it bears the name of grub or caterpillar. Having lived its appointed time in this state, it spins for itself a covering made of a delicate silky are, which becomes a resting-place, or hangs itself up by its head, or goes into the ground, and becomes a chrysalis, and this is called the PUPA state. At last the insect reaches what naturalists call the IMAGO state. Hitherto it has had on a kind of mask, which it has now thrown off, and it comes forth an image of what it truly is. No doubt most of you have seen the silkworm pass through all its stages. If not, by all means procure some eggs, which you can easily do; get a little information as to how to take care of them, and witness the whole process for yourselves. On a near page we give you a very beautiful picture of all these changes.

The LARVA does nothing but eat, which it does most voraciously; at a given time it shrivels up, casts off its skin, takes on a new form, and becomes motionless; then works for itself a kind of sepulcher, where it loses the caterpillar existence, and that of the butterfly commences. At the decisive and final moment, the dawn of a new life, the little creature awakes from its torpor, becomes full of life, eats through its silken covering, and appears under the form of a glittering, beautiful butterfly.

It is to protect themselves from the effects of rain and cold, and perhaps from their enemies too, that they surround themselves with a thick beautiful mantle of silk, and it is by this simple process that all the rich and often overprized silks in the world have been produced.

The number of eggs laid by insects is sometimes enormous—the Wasp 3,000, the Ant from 4,000 to 5,000, a queen Bee from 40,000 to 50,000. A French writer, Pouchet, says respecting the maternal tenderness, intelligence, and prodigious perseverance of some of these insects that they are perfectly unbounded. “Some of these imitate the Rabbit, which denudes all its belly to form a soft pillow for its nest of young. They go even further than this animal; it only deprives itself of part of its wool, while some butterflies, to protect their offspring, tear all the hair off their bodies, and expire as soon as this act of devotion is accomplished. The nest of one of the pests of our forests is composed of a double shelter—a fine down, on which the eggs lie, and which covers them closely, and of an external layer, formed of dense hairs laid on like the slates of a roof, and forming an impenetrable cloth. Thus the young brood are doubly protected—against the severity of winter’s cold and against its destructive rains. Some kind of gall insects immolate themselves in order to protect them. As the enormously-distended insect gradually expels its eggs, it heaps them up in a little pile, and when the body is quite cleared out, so that it resembles a hollow bladder, the female straightway covers her progeny with it, attaches the edges round them, and dies directly after; thus forming for them a convex, solid roof, which protects the eggs against the injurious agency of air and storms. The mother has paid for her child-birth with her life, and her young are born under the shelter of her mummified corpse.

“Live prey is imperatively necessary for some larvae; they require it as soon as they are born, and as the mother cannot fetter it to their cradle she poisons it. But she only administers as much poison as is necessary to stupefy it, so that the young insect when it issues from the egg finds near it the dying insect, which it ends by devouring. One of these remarkable insects, called the Oly Fly, places one of its eggs at the bottom of a little hole which it makes in the ground; it then goes out to hunt, till it discovers a spider or caterpillar; and as soon as it finds one it stings it scientifically and bears it quite paralyzed to its nest. Finally, having placed its victim close to its egg, it closes the opening of the hollow with a little stone, and it takes wing, giving it no further heed. Could maternal tenderness do more?”

Thus we see that the insect, born in one shape dies in another, and the changes which it undergoes are the most important stages of its existence—the ugly caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly, gleaming with azure and gold, and from being one of the most voracious of eaters, having wonderful facilities for tearing to pieces vegetable or other matter, it is so changed that it acquires the most delicately-constructed eating apparatus that can possibly be conceived of, and henceforth it lives only on the nectar of flowers.

Surely we may well say, how wonderful are the thoughts and ways of God, and what infinite skill mark the construction of the smallest of His creatures! Oh, how wonderful the thought, how utterly past our comprehension, every one of these myriads of insects is the direct object of His care! It is good to think of God in this way; but I am persuaded many of my dear young friends know God in a very different way. You know Him as the God and Father of the Lord Jesus; now Jesus was all tenderness, all pity, all love; and more still—He was the Holy One, willing to die rather than that sin should go uncondemned. And Jesus was the full expression of all that God is, both as God and Father. And, dear children, it is only when I know God as my God and my Father in Christ Jesus that I can find any real profit or pleasure in getting to know His wondrous works. But never let us forget, if He clothe the grass of the field, and so cares for the smallest insect, how much more will He care for you who are His children by faith in Christ Jesus!

A Summer Song.

THE sun is careering in glory and might,

‘Mid the deep blue sky and the cloudlets white;

The bright wave is tossing its foam on high,

And the summer breezes go lightly by;

The air and the water dance, glitter, and play,

And why should not I be as merry as they?

The linnet is singing the wild wood through:

The fawn’s bounding footstep skims over the dew:

The butterfly flits round the flowering tree,

And the cowslip and blue-bell are bent by the bee;

All the creatures that dwell in the forest are gay

And why should not I be as merry as they?

July.

HOW rapidly the year rolls round! we have arrived at the height of summer, and all nature presents its greatest glories. We have now hot days, and nights almost as warm. The sun is high in the heavens, and his rays pour down especially in the city with almost intolerable heat. How glad we are when a thunderstorm brings down the cooling rain! This is the month when all who can hasten to the seashore and rejoice alike in the bath and the breeze. Perhaps it is there many of you will first read this, half buried in sand. To me the most interesting sight at a watering-place is the groups of dear little children; I love to see them, with their spades, and their clothes tucked up as far as possible, digging out pits or building castles, and boldly and bravely wading into the water. Now the hay-makers are in full swing, and what little one does not enjoy the fun of tumbling about in the hay? It is the time of fruit too, and what child loves not that? But the birds for the most part have ceased their joyous songs, or at least their notes have lost that vivacity and rich tone with which they charmed us in spring. The great majority are now busy with a second family, and towards the end of this month the early broods are flying about in large flocks, and trying to chirp forth their first songs. The Cuckoo and the Swift will soon take their leave, and start on their long journey into Africa. The loud scream of the latter and his powerful whirling flight will alike be missed.

Last month I told you a little about the interesting changes that many insects pass through before they become butterflies or moths. As this is the month when bees are most busy shall I tell you a little about them and their wonderful ways? It would be scarcely possible to find any wild bees in our Island. When they swarm they are carefully watched to secure them, and if a new swarm should perchance make its escape, it is so valuable as speedily to be captured by some one. Once it was not so. England was a vast forest; the wolf, the bear, and the wild bull abounded, and bees were so numerous that it was known abroad as the Island of Honey; and, as a Roman poet expressed it, the very oaks dripped with honey: nor need we be surprised at this. I have known in the vast forests of America whole companies sally forth with wagons and oxen, and after a few days’ hunt return, with their wagons literally loaded with honeycomb. They find immense hives or nests containing hundreds of pounds of comb and honey.

I need not tell you that honeybees live in swarms, and not like some insects, separated one from another. There are three kinds in every swarm or company—the male, or drone; the neuter, or workers; and the female or Queen. These are as different in their shape as is the work they have to perform. The drone is much larger than the others and distinguished by its breadth, its large eyes, and its much larger wings, and is of a pale brown color. The neuter, or worker, is of a dark brown color, nearly black. In a well-stocked hive the number of drones is from six or seven hundred, to two thousand. The number of workers will amount to 15,000 or 20,000. Their occupation is to collect honey, pollen or bee bread, and a substance called propolis and wax, with which to construct their cells, and attend upon their young. The construction of the bee, as indeed of every kind of insect, displays an exquisite fineness or mechanism that makes the most delicate workmanship that man can construct appear coarse and rough in the extreme. For example, if you look at what is called the proboscis—a kind of trunk with which it collects and then deposits honey into the mouth—through a microscope, you will find it composed of five distinct parts; a central part or the tongue, with which it laps up the honey, and four kinds of stalks, two on each side, one of which is a feeler, and the other the lower jaw. But the hind legs of the working bee are a perfect masterpiece of mechanism. It is at one and the same time, a basket, a brush, and a pair of pincers. The brush is composed of extremely fine hairs arranged in well-proportioned rows: with this brush of fairy delicacy the bee continually brushes her velvet robe to remove the pollen dust with which it becomes loaded whilst she is rifling the flowers and sucking up the nectar Another part of the leg is hollow like a spoon and receives all the gleanings which the bee carries to the hive, and thus becomes a basket for provisions. In addition to this, the bee has the power of opening one part of the leg upon the other part, the two pieces thus becoming a perfect pair of pincers by which it performs important service in the construction of the combs. When the bee is loading her basket she first kneads the little pellet till it becomes somewhat dry and less adhesive, as otherwise it would stick to her limbs, and then passing it into the cavity of the basket gives it two or three pats to make it adhere. All this beautiful arrangement is found only in the workers, and is looked for in vain in one of the drone bees.

Besides the males and the workers there is the Queen bee, which is the most striking feature in the whole hive. Strictly speaking, the workers or neuters are female bees, but owing to the peculiar way in which they are brought up, when first they break through their little eggs, none of them are capable of producing other eggs. All the eggs in one hive are produced by the one Queen, and there is never but one allowed in the same hive, and she is treated with every attention by the whole colony of bees. But if accident carries off the Queen they miraculously know how to create for themselves another. When the females first break through their little eggs, and while in the caterpillar state they are so scantily supplied with food that they never become perfect female bees. But the moment the Queen dies the nurses construct a vast royal cell, forty or fifty times as large as the others. Then they bear away a simple workwoman from her narrow cell, and placing her in this palace they load her with the most agreeable and sweetest-scented bees’ bread, under the influence of which she immediately begins to grow and soon becomes a perfect Queen bee, and receives the homage and obedience of the hive.

It would fill a big book to tell you all about the way in which the bee builds its wonderful hive; how it sallies forth for miles round to find honey and honey-bread, and the material with which it makes its comb; how it makes beautiful little cells; joins them one to another, fills them with honey, then seals them up for winter food: how the Queen lays vast quantities of eggs in a great number of cells made on purpose for her; how the nurses take care of these eggs, as soon as they are hatched feeding the female bees differently from what they do the males, by which they become what are called the neuters or workers; how wonderfully the whole company is organized, so as to divide the labor, and all attending to their own duties in the most perfect manner; in what a remarkable way they keep clean and ventilate and defend their hives; then, again, if their hive is attacked by another swarm of bees, how wonderfully they put themselves in battle array, march forth under their leaders, and with what fury they set upon their assailants. Then, again, it would be most interesting to tell you all about the way they swarm; how, at a certain time, a great number will surround a new Queen, become exceedingly restless, and at a given moment how the new Queen gives a signal, sallies forth, and is instantly followed by all that intend to leave; how they follow her wherever she goes, and cling together on whatever she may happen to settle (often on a branch of a tree), in such a cluster that you would think all the inside ones would be smothered and die, and how in this state they are easily taken, when, being placed in a new hive, they immediately begin to work and form a colony for themselves. But all this I can only name to you with the hope that many will be led to learn much more about these wonderful little creatures. By way of exciting your curiosity let me tell you the remarkable intelligence they display in dealing with enemies that intrude into their hives. If it be an enemy little to be dreaded the first sentinels pierce it with their stings, and in the twinkling of an eye eject the corpse from the common dwelling. But if it be a strong and heavy slug, a general agitation siezes the workers, each one gets ready his weapon, whirls round the invader, and pierces it with his dart. Wounded on all sides, and poisoned by the venom from their stings, the invader dies in violent contortions. But what is to be done with such a weighty foe? The little feet of all the tribe could not suffice to stir the corpse, and the door of the hive would be too narrow to allow it to pass. Its putrid exhalations, would, however, soon infect the colony and develop the germ of some malady. How are they to escape from this dilemma? The republic take counsel and come suddenly to just such a resolution as they would have done if they had thoroughly known one of the arts of ancient Egypt. The bees set to work to embalm the dead animal. For this purpose the workers scatter themselves over the country in order to gather the resinous matter which clings to the buds, with which they closely envelope the dead body and deposit all round it a thick solid layer, which preserves it from putrefaction. But if the invader, instead of being a soft slug vulnerable on all sides, should be a mailed shell-snail, he is attacked in a totally different manner. As soon as the swarm begins to attack it, the snail entrenches itself within its shell and is proof against all their stings. The bees at once set to work and deposit around the shell a solid frame of resinous matter which glues it firmly to the hive, and thus the intruder is doomed to die in his lair!

Wonderful indeed are the works of God and not the least wonder is this, that the more minute are His creatures the more wonderful and exquisite are all their parts and the more interesting their ways.

August.

WITH what an interest have we watched so far, the progress of the seasons. The keen blasts, the snows and frosts, of January; the cold drenching rains and unpleasant thaws of February; then in March, came the first real touches of spring, followed by the pleasant month of April, when the birds and insects and small field animals were all most busy; and then the merry months of May and June, ushering in full blown summer with all the delights of rich July. We have had the time for the sowing of seed, the warm fructifying rains of summer; and now the time of gathering in is come.

Yes, as one has beautifully said Harvest-time is here! It has seemed long in coming, but when we look back, we could almost think it was only yesterday that we saw in many fields nothing but strait rows of short, green blades, like grass, which were the promise of all this golden wealth of full ripe corn. Yes, it is harvest time; and the summer is passing. All around us we see the proofs of the change: leaves withering, flowers fading, and fruits and seeds ripening; summer birds going, others coming, and few singing. Old age is stealing on the year, and we think how very soon it will depart, and another—a “New year” —come, with spring flowers, leaves, and songs. But now how full of blessing is the year that is passing! What riches are spread on every side of us! These fruits, this corn—God has sent them to us, and our hearts should be thankful—

“To all, what best His wisdom knows,

The bounty of our God bestows.

From all, to whom such good He gives—

But most from him, who most receives—

In acts of kindness, peace, and love

To men, of praise to Him above;

He claims, of what He gives, a part;

From all, at least, a thankful heart,

Which, bending low before His throne,

The GIVER in the gifts will own.”

Perhaps the very want of the songs of joy and praise, which we loved in spring, will help us to remember what thanks and love we owe. Certain it is that august is the most silent month of all the twelve. The young birds do indeed try their feeble throats, and make a low, whispered warbling; and now and then a linnet or a goldfinch, in its delight at finding a fine cluster of thistle-heads, with the seeds all ready to float away when the evening breeze rises, will pipe a little bit of its spring song; or a swallow, a chaffinch, yellowhammer, or willow-wren, will twitter or chirp; but these notes only make us take more notice of the general silence.

However, there is one songster who, after a short rest in July, now takes up its part again, and almost startles us by the suddenness with which on calm evenings it begins its cheerful, home-like strain; for it is our favorite English bird—robin redbreast.

You will like to read these verses, which seem to tell exactly what he says now:

“Unheard in summer’s flaring ray,

Pour forth thy notes, sweet singer,

Wooing the stillness of the autumn day:

Bid it a moment linger,

Nor fly

Too soon from Winter’s scowling eye.

“The blackbird’s song at eventide,

And hers, who gay ascends,

Filling the heavens far and wide,

Are sweet. But none so blends

As thine,

With calm decay and peace divine.”

More and more our summer birds depart. The swift is gone by the middle of the month, the cuckoo and the nightjar, also; and we miss many which haunted our garden, those which remain appearing very shy. The three kinds of swallows do not leave yet; and they are very numerous, because all the first broods are now on the wing. The old birds are busied with their second families; and sometime a droll contention may be witnessed: for one of the first family will all at once recollect the nest in which it was reared, and make a dash at it to get in; and the old birds, who are very matter-of-fact bodies, and by no means approve such indications of filial love, will fall upon their too sentimental child, and teach it more swallow-like conduct for the future, by most ungentle pecks and pushes!

The young birds of all kinds may be seen in the fields, farmyards, and gardens; for their fresh-looking plumage and light-colored beaks, and a kind of unknowing way of perching after a flight, make them very distinct from the worn, dusty-feathered, cunning old ones.

About the quadrupeds and reptiles which live wild in England, I have nothing to tell you; unless it be, that the mole-hills may be seen again, now that the grass and the corn are cleared away, and that shrewmice are often found this month, in great numbers, dead in the fields, without any marks to show how they died.

It is to the fruits and seeds, however, that we must look for signs of the harvest-season. The honeysuckle berries and the blackberries are ripe; the nuts of the beech and hazel are ready to fall, and those of the horse-chestnut, with acorns; and the “keys” of the ash, maple, and sycamore, are preparing to follow them. Besides those I named last month, the berries of the elder, holly, dogwood, and lords-and-ladies, are ripening. The scarlet, pulpy berries of the yew, each with a drop of resinous honey in the hollow of it, are also ripe.

This is the best reason for observing the various contrivances for preserving and scattering the seeds of plants, because they are now more plentiful. Some seeds are contained in long-pods, as in the pea, turnip, and water-cress; some are covered with juicy pulp, like the apple and pear; others, besides the pulp, have a stout shell, like the plum and peach; some seed-vessels, as in the strawberry, are on the outside of the pulp; others have shells without tony pulp, like the nut, or are set close together, as if in a dish, like those of the sunflower; but I cannot tell you the one-thousandth part of the different ways in which they are kept till they ripen. And then there are all the plans to scatter them; some seed-vessels having hooks, by which they fix themselves to anything passing, and are carried off; others a tuft of down by which they sail far away from the place where they grew; and others, as in the maple, a kind of wing which helps them to fly to some distance.

The gardens are beginning to lose their beauty; but the asters and dahlias, zinnias, coreopsis, chrysanthemums, and winter cherry, are coming into flower. The laurustinus and wood-laurel often flower again now. The orchard is, however, in all its glory of ripe fruit—peaches, nectarines, apricots, various kinds of plum, and the earlier apples and pears. Our outdoor grapes, also, become as ripe as they can here. It is wheat and barley-harvest, and beans and oats are cut; hops are ready for picking, and the chief toil of the year for the farmer is brought to an end.

September.

HOW rapidly rolls round the year! If August’s changes told us that summer had got to its height, September, especially the end of it, tells us plainly the year has begun to wane. True, birds sing sweetly, the flowers bloom, and there is a warmth and freshness which must remind us of the beauties of spring. But the shades of evening come on apace, hoar frosts are frequent, the night stretches far into the morning, the trees begin to shed their leaves, and the woods and the fields assume those varied and beautiful, but sombre hues which tell us plainly autumn is nearly gone, and that another winter is fast approaching.

September equally with August is a busy month with the farmer. The remains of harvest must be all housed now, or it may be spoiled or lost. And many a little animal, too, is as busy as the farmer.

Squirrels, hedgehogs, and field mice are actively laying by their winter stores; lizards, snakes, frogs, and toads become more inactive, because at night they feel the torpor of the cold season creeping over them. This is the season when our friends the birds, especially the swallow, prepare for their long journey to warmer climes. You may now see them gather in large flocks on the top of houses and chimneys: day after day they will rise up in companies, wheel about in circles, and again settle down; then they earnestly chatter together as if consulting when they should make their grand start. Just about the end of the month, as if a signal had been given by some old patriarch swallow, up they will all start, mount high in the air, and after whirling round and round, off they will start towards the south, and you will see them no more till another spring comes round. In short, plants and flowers, insects and butterflies, as well as trees and shrubs and swallows, all have one voice now, and tell us the year is fast passing away.

But perhaps the one great lesson that autumn teaches is the necessity of thinking for the future, and providing for that which is to come. Harvest is the time of ingathering, and that neglected, whatever it may be, surely brings sorrow and shame. Among the beautiful sayings of Solomon is this— “He that gathereth in summer is a wise son; but he that sleepeth in harvest is a son that causeth shame.” And which of my readers does not remember what he says of that little insect, the ant? Twice has he held them up for our admiration and profit. In the sixth and the thirtieth chapters of that wonderful book of Proverbs does he allude to them. “Go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise; which having no guide, overseer or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest;” and again, “The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer.”

I hope no little boy or girl who is reading this is a sluggard, that is, lazy and idle, not fond of work. This is in one sense the time of your harvest when you should be laying up for future use that which you will need all through life. Your beloved and loving parents have provided books and schools and teachers, and any boy or girl that neglects to profit by these, that slovenly passes over their lessons, nay, that does not give most earnest heel to them, will certainly suffer loss to the end of life. This is your summer, dear young friends, and unlike the ant you have guides and overseers and rulers, who are ready to give you the advantage of all their experience, and who even delight to help you to lay up, if you should tarry in this world for many years to come, that store of knowledge which you will surely need. Your Grammars and Geographies and Histories, your French and German or other languages, if you are able to learn them, are all so much “meat” for future use, and this is your season for preparing and laying it by.

As in former months we have had little talks about the migration of insects, birds, and animals, and bees and their wonderful little ways, and as this month is perhaps the busiest one with the ants, shall I tell you a little of their interesting ways? A great book might be written about them, but I can only tell you a very little, and this I will extract from a book called “Silver Wings and Golden Scales,” and thus he begins. “Of all the most wonderful things in the world, ants are the most wonderful; I really believe we are nothing to them. They build great cities under ground, burrowing sufficiently deep to have large lofty apartments, with long galleries, and roads or streets among them. They roof their houses with beams of wood, which they cross in a clever and curious fashion; and they fill up the spaces between, chiefly with corn and other grains, because their shape and hardness make them very suitable for the purpose. When ants were seen busily carrying corn underground, and at one time when they were seen carrying their eggs, which people mistook for corn, it was thought they were laying up food for winter; but this is not the case. They lie in a half torpid state through the winter, and would not know what to do with food if they had it. Though, I believe in eastern countries, where the cold is not sufficient to make them torpid, they really do lay by stores of grain for the time when they cannot get fresh food. However, the English ants that do not do that, do yet more wonderful things, and provide for their wants in a yet more wonderful manner. What do you think of their keeping cows to give them food, and slaves to work for them? These cows are tiny insects that they capture from flowers, and their slaves are other ants, like themselves, that they make prisoners, and employ to work for them. The tiny insects are called aphides, and are capital cows for the ants, as they have a sweet little liquid within them, which they yield to the touches of an ant’s antennæ, very much as a cow gives up her milk for us. And the ants actually carry off these aphides, and keep them in their cities, and milk them and drink the nice food they yield them. They take great care of them, and feed them, and look after them, just as much as we do after our cattle.

“They also carry away and keep the larvæ of one sort of beetle, which has long hairs, and they suck some sort of pleasant juice, for which they appear to have a particular fancy, out of these hairs. They are very careful creatures, and very affectionate. When the eggs are laid, the workers, as the ordinary ants are called, take the greatest care of them, and sometimes, but not always, the mother assists. The eggs are constantly licked, and turned over and over by the ants, and they are carried about from one part of the house to another; up to the highest chamber in the roof, or down to the lowest underground apartment, according to the time of day, or the weather, so that they get every possible advantage. When the little larvae come out they are treated in the same way, fed and carried about with the utmost care and affection. Some of the ants have beautiful silver wings, and fly here and there and enjoy themselves while they are quite young; but when they grow older, and ought to stay at home to attend to their duties, they actually deprive them selves of their wings, so that they are not able to gad about; and if they do not do this, the workers do it for them. They seize hold of them, and tear of their wings; after which they treat them with the greatest tenderness, and even respect. They form little escorts of eight or ten attendants, who devote themselves to them, lead them, and even carry them about, showing them the different chambers, and allowing them to select those they prefer for themselves to lay their eggs in. They dance round them, in order to afford them amusement, or stand on their hind legs and prance. Yet those queens as they may be called, have no power. They do not decide on, or perform any of the work that is to be done. There are, as Solomon said, no rulers or captains among them. It is a real republic, all are equal; and every hand seems to know what he has to do.

“They have certainly a language, though a silent one; they make signals, which are well understood, and they touch each other with their antennæ, or horns, a never-failing mode of communication. Suppose an ant has been out walking and discovers something very nice to eat; without tasting it, he hastens home, and going up to half-a-dozen ants, one after another, touches them with his antennae; without the slightest hesitation, they all follow him out, and together they bring the food home, rolling it along, and instructing each other how to manage it. In the morning, if it is fine and dry, these sensible creatures open all their doors and windows. Perhaps one of them has gone out, and perceiving that rain is coming, hastens back into the house; after which, a number will come running out, and close every door and every window, and keep them shut till the shower is over, when they will all be opened again, if the sun shines and the weather looks promising.

“In other countries there are some ants that are the most useless idle fellows in the world, and quite incapable of doing anything for themselves. They are red ants; and in their neighborhood, perhaps, are colonies of active, industrious working ants—blacks—or, as I suppose we should call them, Negroes. On some day by a pre-concerted plan, the red ants set forth in a large army. They have first of all sent out scouts or spies, who on their return have communicated that they have discovered a negro fort As soon as they receive this welcome information, the red ants set forth in a compact, well disciplined army, and taking the road pointed out in due time find themselves in front of the negro fort. The sentinels guarding the entrances of the fort rush in to give the alarm, and then rush out again, followed with extraordinary rapidity by numbers of indignant ants, who fling themselves on the invaders with violence, the instant they ascertain what their intentions are. The Negroes are excellent workers, but the red ants are the best soldiers. The attacking army presses into the fort, and for a few moments disappears from sight. The red soldiers enter by the regular doors, or cut their way in through the walls, while some of the black ants resist and fight, and others make their escape, carrying the old and sickly and such of the children and eggs as they can contrive to take with them. Presently back march the invaders out of the fort, but they march not back alone. Here comes a great wonder. Each man carries in his mouth an egg or larva of the Negro colony, and carries it not only out of the fort, but bears it triumphantly home. They never attempt to capture the grown—up ants—who doubtless would run away from them, and not do anything they were told—but, clever and far sighted creatures! they make prisoners of little children, whom they can educate in any way they like, but whom they treat with as great kindness as their own children. As these children enter on the ant-stage of their existence, they lead them through the house, and skew them all the passages and rooms in it, after which the slaves begin to work, and do everything there is to to be done for their masters, who, in all respects, except in capturing slaves and bringing up and feeding children, are the laziest, idlest, and most useless creatures in existence. Everything that ordinary ants do for themselves, these red ants make their black slaves do for them. They will not even take the trouble of feeding themselves.”

Many other interesting things could be told you about ants, but I have no doubt what I have now said will lead you to take a deep interest in all the wonderful little creatures that God has made.

October.

IN England’s variable climate it is difficult to tell whether October speaks more of autumn passing away or winter fast approaching. There may be much mild sunshine at least in midday, or there may be incessant and cold drizzly rain. If your home lies in the country, far from the smoky, busy city, you will find the signs of coming winter as many and as curious as those of spring. If summer friends, who gladdened us with their song are all gone, or going, others take their place. Long trains of wild ducks, snipe, woodcocks, and wild geese, are found about our marshes and rivers, and if they give us no song, they supply us with plenty of food.

At this time look out for the jumping four-winged beetles, usually called the turnip fly, so troublesome to both man and beast. Now, too, the gossamer spider abounds, and his beautiful webs seem to cover every shrub and tree. This is the time for mushrooms, and sallying forth in the early morning you may find, in particular spots, immense quantities, all sprung up in a night.

But perhaps the trees give the surest signs that summer is past, and cold winter near at hand. You will find immense pleasure in noticing the many and beautiful changes in their foliage. Day by day the bright hues get deeper and richer—orange, yellow, and brown; and by the end of this month the change in the woods is as great and wonderful as that in spring, when the bare boughs had become clothed with living green. If harvest work is all over, this month gives the farmer and the gardener plenty to do. Turnips and beetroots, fine winter food for cattle, are to be got in; but chiefly the farmer is busy with his plow, making ready for the next wheat crop, which he soon begins to plant.

As the year has rolled round we have had little talks about birds, bees, and butterflies; only, as it were, glimpses, just to incite you to find out for yourselves the teeming wonders of all the works of God, wonders as marvelous in the least as in the greatest. So far we have not peeped into the dark, deep sea, but the marvels there are even greater than on dry land. The one great wonder of the old creation is the way in which it teems with life. Earth, air, and sea, are full of life. But in its fruitfulness the sea far surpasses the earth. A line 27,600 feet has been let down, heavily weighted, but without touching any bottom, in the south Atlantic Ocean. Some think that as the highest mountains are 30,000 feet above the level of the sea, so the valley of the sea will descend to a like depth of six miles of water! How is the mind lost in wonder at the thought that each and every drop of that inconceivable body of water is in itself a world, teeming with breathing, moving, living things! Life shows itself everywhere; alike in the deep dark abysses of the ocean, or floating as seaweed on its surface, in the bright sunshine of day.

You have all heard of the coral and its tiny insect. I want to give you this month just a peep at some of the wonderful things about it. It is a large subject, and it would fill a volume to tell you all. Some have spent many years in studying the history of this little wonderful thing. More than two thousand years ago it was a theme of wonder with both poets and philosophers; then, as now, the ornaments made from it were largely worn, and formed an important branch of commerce, and yet strange to say for 2000 years the wise men of the world were altogether in the dark as to the true nature of the coral. It is only 150 years since its mysterious nature was unveiled. Till that time it was universally thought to be a submarine shrub; but I cannot stop to tell you how it was discovered to be not a water plant but a truly living insect.

The coral forms a stein of a beautiful red color, as hard as the most compact rocks, and capable of taking a fine polish. In many respects it resembles the stem of a tree. Its branches are covered with a soft rose-colored bark, filled with small holes, in each of which resides one of the builders of the coral. These are called Polypi, and their action consists in expanding and contracting. When expanded, they have the appearance of pretty little flowers of a beautiful white color, with eight divisions spread out like rays, and the borders of which are ornamented with a fringe of minute hairs. Each polyp may be described as a pouch of animated matter, with a few feeders about its mouth. This little creature secretes or extracts from its food calcareous or lime like particles, with which it builds a limestone house. Not only so, but they produce innumerable eggs of a milk-white color, which immediately after leaving the mother, move about actively, and seek for a favorable place on which to plant themselves. When once planted, there they remain, first to be hatched, then to open their mouths, take in their food, build up more little coral cells and so carry on the great work for which God has appointed them.

Let us think of one such egg by some unknown means removed to an immense distance from its native home, and transfixed alone on some rock in the center of the great Pacific Ocean. There alone it begins its solitary but active life; feeds, builds its home, produces its eggs, and dies. In a short time millions upon millions have sprung from that one egg, they stretch out for miles in every direction, each succeeding race building on the graves of those that have gone before; and thus, gradually but surely, they rise to the surface, and their wonderful work is done. To be constantly covered with water seems necessary to their existence. When once they have reached the surface, sand and broken pieces of coral and floating water plants soon raise it still higher: winds and birds bring innumerable seeds, vegetation rich and luxuriant soon follows; after that, perhaps, forests of noble trees, and then comes man to crown the work of nature by raising dwellings on the ruins of myriads of unseen insects.

“Millions of millions thus, from age to age,

With simplest skill and toil unmeasurable,

No moment and no movement unimproved,

Laid line on line, on terrace terrace spread.

So small the heightening, brightening gradual mound,

By marvelous structure climbing towards the day.

Each wrought alone, yet altogether wrought,

Unconscious, not unworthy instruments

By which a hand invisible was rearing,

A new creation in the secret deep,

Omnipotence wrought in them, with them, by them.”

If you have not read as yet the part these tiny insects have played in the construction of the world, you will scarcely believe what wonders they have wrought. Islands of comparatively modern construction abound in every part of the ocean. In the Pacific Ocean, there are 290, covering altogether 20,000 square miles—an enormous work, equal to an eighth part of the surface of all the other Islands of this vast sea; along the shores of New Caledonia they have built up a reef 400 miles in length; and another, and perhaps the largest single one, which runs along the north-east coast of Australia, 1000 miles in extent.

But all this, mighty as it seems, is but a fraction of the grand work they have done. They have been well called builders of the world, for it is now clearly seen that at certain antediluvian periods these almost imperceptible insects have recast and changed the surface of the globe itself. At that time they swarmed the immense seas, which rolled their dashing waters over almost all the lands now covered by our fields and busy homes, and many a modern country rests on a vast graveyard of corals. Some of our loftiest and largest mountain ranges are composed of corals and debris all ground together into one limestone mass, by the tremendous grinding power of the ocean, and after that upheaved by frightful but majestic volcanic action.

One thing I must tell you; it is said one of the most beautiful sights in the whole world is to look down through the deep blue sea on one of these living silent coral beds. Language fails to describe the glorious brilliancy of the colors of these expanding flowery insects—they oven shame the glories of the rainbow on the land; and to complete the scene swarms of fish are seen moving about with all their graceful motions, and feeding on the tips of those very branching corals exactly as flocks of sheep nibble the green verdure of our fields. Oh, how wonderful are the works of God! Truly “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in the deep, these see the wonders of the Lord!”

We make a great boast of the wisdom and strength and perseverance of man. We boast of what he has accomplished in the world’s history. Well, he has done many great things. Railways, steamships, telegraph wires reaching all round the world, deep coal-pits, great buildings, the ancient pyramids of Egypt—these and many other things are wonderful. But after all, compared with the work of these tiny creatures, all man’s work is as nothing. Man will spend years in building a lighthouse, or a great pier, but the storm of a single night will sweep it all away. These little insects build up mountains in the deep sea, and they can bid defiance to the mightiest tempest that ever swept through the ocean. And the pyramids of Egypt, the greatest works that man ever put together, are but as a grain of sand to a mountain, compared with the work of the little coral.

November.

“See Winter comes to rule the varied year,

Sullen and sad, with all his rising train,

Vapors, and clouds, and storms.”

NOVEMBER, dark, dreary, and cold has overtaken us once more. The year, now grown old, is waning fast, and but a few more weeks and we shall have to say a long farewell. Though winter scarcely commences this month, still there is every sign that it is near at hand. If December comes with its hard, biting frosts, freezing up our lakes and rivers; and brings, too, its heavy falls of snow, covering all nature with a soft winter mantle white, November is not far behind. Cold and keen, as well as wild and stormy winds, are now abroad; causing on sea horror and shipwreck, and weary, watching aching hearts ashore; across the wild open waste s on land it sweeps madly and irresistibly along and brave and hardy he who dares meet its awful rage; mournfully it moans through the forest trees; and in the towns, howling down chimneys, shrieking along corridors, whistling through the keyholes—all these have a voice which tells us plainly “Winter is at hand.” The sun has little power now, and soon is gone, and long dark nights succeed. Gladly we gather round the fire, and enjoy its cheerful warmth.

We have watched with ever-deepening interest the beautiful and varied changes of the seasons. First, young and vigorous spring, with its rich profusion of bud and bloom; then summer gaily decking nature in her loveliest robe; and lastly, autumn, the rich, full perfection of the year. Thomson, overcome at such a prospect in his “Season’s,” rapturously bursts forth:

“Oh speak the joy! Ye, whom the sudden tear,

Surprises often while you look around,

And nothing strikes the eye, but sights of bliss,

All various Nature pressing on the heart.”

But now we are in the last dark season of the year, when Nature sinks to rest. Gone is the bright verdure from the fields; the richly-foliaged trees are leafless now, and shivering in the wind; and o’er that scene anon so beautiful and gay, dreary desolation reigns supreme. No cheerful note of bird delights our ear; all have flown to sunnier climes. Only poor robin-redbreast, and his poorer neighbor the sparrow remain to remind us of our loss. Be kind and generous to these! Scatter unsparingly the crumbs upon the lawn and windowsill; perhaps by this small act of kindness you are doing the will of your Father which is in Heaven, for He tells us that not a sparrow falleth to the ground unknown to Him.

Month after month as the year has rolled away, we have sought to show you something of the marvelous skill, the wisdom, and the goodness of God, as seen, more particularly in the animal creation all around. The welcome home-returning swallow—the sure harbinger of spring, the variegated moth, sporting from flower to flower in the golden summer sun, the busy beaver, and the still more busy bee and ant; and lastly the wonders of the insect world. The marvelous instincts all these possess, as well as the remarkable activity they display, plainly tell us what a wonderful Creator is our God. But more than this, many a useful lesson may be learned from them. How patient, persevering, and prudent, too, in all their little ways.

But now the birds have flown, the animals are in their holes; nature is at rest, and there is little to interest us around. Where then shall we look this month for that which may please as well as profit us?

At this season of the year the nights are often very bright and clear, and the vast firmament above with its twinkling starry host, may be observed with beautiful distinctness. As they shine down upon us they would seem to invite our observation.

You may say it is a long, long way to look; and you are right, much farther indeed than you or I can possibly conceive. Yet we may learn something about the stars. Do you know that every one of those little twinkling points of light are great blazing suns as large as ours, and some indeed hundreds of times larger? But let us see how this can be. It is calculated that the distance of the nearest fixed star from the earth is twenty billions of miles, a distance as impossible for us to understand as the duration of eternity. Yet, spite of this vast intervening space, their glimmering light is visible to us, which compels us to believe them suns, for no light less powerful and bright could ever penetrate so far.

But suns as they likely are to other systems, to our vision they are but stars, and it is only as such we can know and speak about them.

As far as history takes us back, even to the remotest periods, the stars, their positions and movements in the heavens, seem to have been observed and studied, no less for useful and important objects than from mere interest or admiration.

The occupation of the ancients, for a great part, was that of husbandmen and shepherds, which mode of life we know is carried on under the open canopy of heaven, and where the stars, and indeed all the heavenly bodies would naturally invite attention. Perhaps to this, then, in a great measure, we may attribute the very considerable knowledge of the stars that the ancients possessed.

It was in these remote times the stars were first grouped into constellations. Each one received some fanciful name, according to the being or object the stars composing it were supposed to represent. That no real resemblance exists, however, should be clearly understood. If my reader should think to find by looking up at Ursa Major the outline of a bear, or at Leo Major, the outline of a lion, or at Cassiopeia a “lady sitting in a chair,” he will look in vain. No such resemblance is there. It was a mere fancy of the ancients, but a useful one, to simplify to them the positions of the stars.

There are between eighty and ninety of these constellations, each bearing a distinct name; but they are too many to mention here. Beside these numerous smaller constellations, the stars are grouped into twelve large divisions, called zodiacal constellations, or the Signs of the Zodiac. The sun in making his apparent journey right round the heavens, enters and passes through all these signs, one every month, and so through all in the year. The constellations and the stars that compose them, are thus useful as determining the exact position of the sun at any time, as he travels round the heavens. The names of these twelve signs are Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces. These are the Latin names, but their names and order in English you may easily remember in this simple rhyme:

“The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,

And next the Crab, the Lion shines,

The Virgin, and the Scales,

The Scorpion, Archer, and He Goat,

The Man that holds the Watering-pot,

The Fish with glittering Scales.”

In order to learn the positions of the various constellations, and the names of the stars which compose them, you will want a star-map or a celestial globe. But you should also get some friend to point out some of the principal ones to begin with. Though, perhaps a little difficult at the beginning, you will yet find it very interesting, and for this reason. After making some progress, you will not as before gaze up with indifference at an indistinguishable multitude of stars, perhaps only attracted by their brightness and their beauty, but now they take a form or shape as it were, you are struck with the marked distinctness of each constellation; and like a picture-puzzle which when once found out nothing else is noticed but the subject, so is it with the constellations. They will soon too become like old friends. Rising gradually in the east you will observe them travel over slowly but surely towards the west, where they finally sink down and disappear.

But now let us take a glance at some of those which this month are shining out with beautiful distinctness. And first, let us look at the Great Bear, one of the northern constellations, which is seen by us the year round. There must be few indeed who do not know the Great Bear with his seven straggling stars, two of which, called the Pointers, are ever turned towards the North Pole Star, and from which appearance they received their name. The Pole Star is easily discovered if you follow the direction indicated by the Pointers. It is due north: and the constellation of the Great Boar ever as it were swinging round it, with the aid of the Pointers, was a sure sign to the mariner on the watery wastes, or the bewildered traveler on land, before the introduction of the useful compass. Another, and a brilliantly beautiful constellation, is Orion. In a sloping direction you may now see it gradually climbing the eastern sky, forming with its surroundings quite a picture. Its shape is a sort of parallelogram or long square; there are four stars to represent the corners, and in the center three stars across, and three above, not so distinct, pointing downwards which are called Orion’s Belt and Sword. Two brilliant stars to the left, at a great stretch, seem to guard his side, and these are called his Dogs. Sirius is the largest and the brightest in the heavens.

Now may also be seen plainly the Pleiades and the Hyades, both in Taurus the Bull. The Pleiades consist of a group of very small stars, and the Hyades form a triangle, supposed to represent the bull’s face, two stars branching off above are taken for his horns. These constellations are mentioned in the Book of Job called by these names, some four thousand years ago they still retain them to the present day Many more beautiful constellations, as Gemini the Twins, so called from the two bright stars Castor and Pollux, situated therein; Cassiopeia, Triangulum, and Draco are easily enough discovered when the nights are bright and clear.

So far we have spoken only of the Fixed Stars, those whose positions in the heavens never alter with respect to each other. But there are a few others, which on the contrary are always moving, and for that reason are called Planets or “wanderers,” as the word implies. These stars or planets though immensely far away, are but next door to us compared with the infinite distance of the fixed stars.

Since the invention of the huge telescopes with their wonderful magnifying power, now set up in various parts of the world, many interesting facts about the planets have come to light. What they are, their size and weight, the velocity with which they travel—all these facts are now perfectly well known. So far as yet discovered there are twelve planets, of which one is our earth. What a thought! This big round world is but a star in the vast universe of God! Unlike the fixed stars which shine by their own light, the planets are entirely dark bodies receiving all their luminous appearance from the sun, around which they ceaselessly revolve. Were his pleasant, cheering beams withdrawn, our earth and all the planets would be instantly involved in impenetrable gloom.

MERCURY is the first and the nearest planet to the sun. He is hardly visible to us, being lost in the superior blaze of the sun’s light; he may, however, sometimes be seen just before the rising and a little after the setting of the sun.

VENUS, the next and the most brilliant star in the heavens, our beautiful evening and morning star alternately, is perhaps best known of all the planets.

The EARTH is the third planet with which I should hope you are familiar enough!

MARS, the fourth planet from the sun, is known by the dull red light which he reflects, and so called after the god of war. To the inhabitants of Mars, if any, our planet appears alternately as the morning and evening star, as Venus does to us.

The ASTEROIDS, Vesta, Juno, Pallas, and Ceres are beyond Mars. These are very small planets, only discovered this century.

JUPITER, the largest, and after Venus the brightest star, is distinguished by numerous marks like bands or belts across his disc, though only seen of course through a powerful telescope.

SATURN is as remarkable for his “ring,” as Jupiter for his “belts”! This ring is a vast solid mass completely surrounding him, and is thought by some astronomers to reflect the light and heat of the sun on the body of the planet.

URANUS and NEPTUNE, the last and the most remote in the planetary system, are at too great a distance to be particularly observed; hence very little is known about them. All these revolve round the sun at various distances and in unequal periods of time. Mercury, the nearest, 37 millions of miles, in 87 days, to Neptune the farthest planet, 2746 millions of miles in 164 of our years.

Several of the planets have moons revolving round them; but I have not space to tell you of them.

And now in conclusion let us turn our thoughts to Him, of whom, the Psalmist says “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” As we contemplate all these rolling worlds of light, our thoughts must rise in wondering adoration the Omnipotent God! These are His stupendous works! Created at His word; cast forth into infinite space by His Almighty hand: there they are set, and there they will remain till He that bade them be, shall bid them be no more! How impressively one of our poets says:

“When the Lord created the earth and sea,

The stars and the glorious sun;

The Godhead spoke—and the universe woke,

And the mighty work was done.”

But God has not revealed himself only in His works. Miracle of grace He Himself has visited this earth, in the person of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. In pity to a lost and ruined world He condescended to be made a man, and walk with men; God with man, wondrous fact! For three-and-thirty years He was the Light of this dark world, “giving light to them that sat in darkness;” then He wrought that wondrous work, which, trusted and believed, yields peace and rest unto the soul. He has gone away, but He will come again, and very soon; and through the deepening midnight gloom we hear His loving voice to all who wait for Him. “Behold I come quickly.” “I am the bright and morning star.”

Winter.

“Through the hush’d air the whit’ning shower descends,

At first, thin wavering; till at last the flakes

Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the day

With a continual flow. The cherish’d fields

Put on their winter robe of purest white,

~~~~~Drooping, the laborer ox

Stands cover’d with the snow, and then demands

The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven

Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around

The winnowing store, and claim the little boon

Which Providence assigns them. One alone,

The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,

Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,

In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves

His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man

His annual visit. Half afraid, he first against

The window beats; then, brisk, alights

On the warm hearth; then, hopping o’er the floor,

Eyes all the smiling family askance,

And pecks and starts, and wonders where he is—

Till, more familiar grown, the table crumbs

Attract his slender feet.”

December.

MY young friends, we have now, as it were, come to the end of our journey. Together have we traveled through the year. If its beginning was the morning, we have now reached the evening of our day. Was early spring the infancy of the year, now have we arrived at its old age, and all around reminds us of darkness, sleep, and death.

You may think that winter will not afford the pleasures of promising spring, and glorious summer, and fruitful autumn. True, you will see or hear but little of all the creatures we have watched together for the whole year. Our smaller wild insects and animals are still fast asleep and snug in their hiding places, either underground, or in crevices in trees and walls. Few are the birds now to be seen. Yet let me say to my young friends, be not cowards, brace yourselves up for a storm, sally forth in the snow and even in mid-winter you will find much to amuse and instruct. Listen for the robin, look out for the tiny wren hopping about with his tail erect as if bidding defiance to the cold. Only throw out a few crumbs about your country home, and you will soon have a crowd of visitors—sparrows, titmice, chaffinches, and the fine large blackbird will gather around to share your hospitality.

From plants and flowers, and trees, how much may you learn even now. God is as active in the winter as in the summer; only His care has now wrapped up the buds, and the roots, and is taking care of the seeds, just as surely as He is of the lizard, the snake, the toad, and the frog, all numbed with the cold, and snugly waiting for the warmth of spring to call them back to life and activity again.

If the winter is severe, we may now look for snow; and what boy or even girl loves not a good game with that? But have you not heard grandfather often say, “Winters are not what they were when I was a lad”? I believe this is true. Fifty years ago snow would often lie on the ground for weeks together, and streams and rivers would be hard frozen for the whole of December and January. What a beautiful sight is a gentle fall of snow, covering all nature with its lovely mantle! About snow, then, let us have a little talk together. By the aid of a microscope you would find every particle or flake of snow exquisitely beautiful, regular and of endless variety of forms. Commonly a snowflake consists of a series of crystals, formed independently in the upper regions of the air. These unite together in groups while descending, and form the most beautiful stars or wheels with regular diverging rays. Their shape is endless, but they have all one common center with six rays branching off. Our engraving will give you an idea of the beautiful regularity with which they are always formed. Every particle in the whole world has got some such exact form, only they are infinite in variety.

Snow is formed and falls very differently in different parts. With us it falls in flakes and soon becomes sufficiently hard to bear our weight; but on the Alps, which you have all heard of, it falls so lightly that it is impossible to walk on it, and the traveler sinks at once six or eight feet deep; and it is this circumstance which causes so many to be lost while traveling on the Alps. In America, snow falls much more heavily than with us. I have seen it in Chicago drift against the houses as high as the roof, and the people have had to cut tunnels from their doors. I have traveled on the prairies with snow on each side of the railway as high as the tops of the carriages. Once, I saw a party who had been blocked up with snow for seven days on the rails, many miles from a village, during which they must have perished but for a cargo of oysters and crackers which happened to be on board.

This, however, is not to be compared with the accumulations of snow on high mountains and valleys. You have all heard of the terrible avalanches on the Alps which are always a terror to the traveler and the shepherd, and which have sometimes buried whole villages Avalanches are generally formed by enormous masses of snow, which from the tops of the mountains come rolling down into the valleys. So easily are these vast overhanging masses disturbed, that in slimmer, and in the heat of the day especially, the slightest vibration in the air will bring them down. In the mountain passes, where there is the most reason to dread them, the mule-drivers always travel before day, the time when they are least to be feared; and in order not to agitate the air, they observe absolute silence. But in spite of every care, at different times, many hundreds of men have perished at once, buried and crushed under their weight. In the fifteenth century, no fewer than 400 Austrian soldiers were buried under one of these falls of snow. Sometimes timely warning is given that a terrible avalanche is likely to break away near some village, and you may readily imagine what a scene of terror immediately follows. In an instant the cry of alarm runs through the valley; every house is vacated; old and young, men, women, children, and cattle flee in the wildest confusion, and woe be to any that remain to gather up their stuff! Frightful indeed are the frozen solitudes of these mountains, and a horrible death seems at each step to threaten the rash mortal who enters them. On one side the avalanche threatens to bury him; beneath his feet open frightful chasms in which he would be shattered, while cold and hunger may destroy him. Every day the names of new victims are inscribed in the record of death, and yet each day some dauntless traveler tries a new enterprise. Even in the most rigorous seasons, the smuggler, the peddler, and the courier brave the perils of the Alps in defiance of the snows and the avalanche, not unfrequently perishing in the attempt to gain the Swiss or the Italian side of the Alps. These are often indebted to the monks and St. Bernard dogs for the preservation of life. “The night was calm and beautiful,” says a summer guest at the hospital of the monks, “when one of the monks said, ‘There is a company ascending the mountain on the Swiss side;’ but silent as the grave was everything around us, our ears could not perceive a sound. He said they were very distant. He was right; the party arrived long enough after to astonish us at the perception which he must have had of their approach.”

You have all heard of the famous St. Bernard dogs, and the wonderful intelligence they display in discovering and helping the perishing traveler. They will scent him many feet below the snow scratching away the drift, rousing the dying man from his stupefying sleep, and informing the monks of their discovery by a peculiar bark. One of these dogs during his career saved the lives of forty persons, and is known to fame by finding a child in a frozen state, succeeding in restoring animation, and then bearing him upon his back to the hospital.

In Scotland, there is always much more snow than in England. History tells us that in the year 1620, there was a dismal snowstorm that lasted thirteen days and nights, accompanied with great cold and a keen biting wind. About the fifth and six days, the young sheep fell into a torpid state and died; and about the ninth and tenth the shepherds began to build up large semicircular walls of their dead, in order to afford some shelter for the living; but to little purpose. On the fourteenth day, on many a high lying farm, not a survivor of extensive flocks was to be found. On one large moor, where upwards of twenty thousand sheep had been kept, only forty-five remained alive. Again, in the year 1795, whole flocks were overwhelmed by a sudden storm of drifting snows, and seventeen shepherds perished, besides thousands of sheep.

You have, perhaps, heard of the long frost in the year 1716, when the Thames was frozen so hard that tents were erected and fairs were held on the ice. American and Canadian rivers constantly freeze to the depth of three feet; they will bear any amount of weight, and in the winter months they become the highways for traffic. On the river at Chicago I have seen hundreds of horses with sleighs prancing about, and presenting with their tinkling bells a most animated scene. Sometimes confined air will produce a crack from one bank of the river to the other. A friend of mine with his wife, when taking a long ride at a tremendous gallop, suddenly came upon one of these cracks. What was to be done? To stop the horse was impossible. Nothing was left but a dash clean across. The intelligent animal saw the “fix,” as the Yankees call it, and with one tremendous bound he cleared the fissure and landed passengers and sleigh safe on the other side.

History records some terrible winters going back for more than 1400 years.

In A. D. 401, the Black Sea was entirely frozen over; and in 763, the Dardenelles was frozen over.

In 1067, the cold was so intense, that most of the travelers in Germany were frozen to death on the roads.

In 1281, such quantities of snow fell in Austria, as to bury up the houses.

In 1684, many trees and even the oaks in England were split by the frost. Most of the hollies were killed. Coaches drove along the Thames. Almost all the birds perished.

In 1709, occurred perhaps the most intense winter on record. Rivers, lakes, and even seas for miles out were one solid mass of ice. The frost is said to have penetrated three yards into the ground. Birds and wild beasts on the continent were strewed dead in the fields, and men perished by thousands in their houses. Shrubs and vegetables died in England, and wheat rose from two to four pounds a quarter. In the south of France the olive plantations were almost entirely destroyed.

But if my young readers desire to know the full but terrible grandeur of a winter scene, you must become acquainted with Arctic explorations. The immense glaziers of the Alps; which we have spoken of, are as nothing when compared with the frozen deserts of the polar regions. It would be impossible to give a full account of these eternal snows and mountains of ice here. Masses of ice, thousands of miles in extent, cover the Northern regions, and no description it is said can convey an adequate idea of the grandeur and the terribleness of the scene.

In 1817, an icy continent, having an area of many thousand square miles, not far from the North of Iceland, suddenly broke up into an immense number of fragments which were scattered over the North Atlantic Ocean.

These great ice formations are due to the spherical formation of the earth, and what is called the obliquity of its axis, by which the presence of the sun is entirely withdrawn from the arctic and Antarctic regions for a large portion of the year, when intense frost reigns through the long dreary nights that prevail.

Every schoolboy should make himself familiar with the many expeditions to discover the North Pole, and the north west passage.

And now, my young friends, I must say farewell. Throughout the year we have had pleasant talks of many things, small and great. I have tried to turn your hearts to Him who made them all.

These are His works and marvelous are they all. But as I have told you before, so would I again repeat—it is impossible to know God, so as to be of any real value, till we know in Christ Jesus. Never can I truly value God as the creator, till I know Him as the God and Father of the Lord Jesus. This is the true God and eternal life.