Some of the most observable plants in flower are the vine: the wood-spurge, and wood-pimpernel, the one in dry, the other in moist thickets; buckbean, water iris, and willowherbs, in marshes; meadow-cranes-bill, vipers-bugloss, and corn-poppy, in fields; mullein, foxglove, thistles, and mallow, by road-sides and in ditch banks; and that singular plant the bee orchis, in chalky or limestone soils. Gooseberries, currants, and strawberries, begin to ripen in this month, and prove extremely refreshing as the parching heats advance. About an hour before sunset, in the mild evenings of this month, it is highly amusing to watch the common white or barn owl in search of its prey, which consists almost wholly of field-mice. The large quantity of soft plumage with which this bird is covered, enables it to glance easily, and without noise, through the air. Its manner of hunting is very regular, first beating up the side of a hedge, then taking a few turns over the meadow, and finishing by the opposite hedge, every now and then dropping among the grass in order to seize its food. It has been found by careful observation, that when a pair of owls have young, a mouse is brought to the nest about once in every five minutes. Another interesting nocturnal bird is the goat-sucker, or fern-owl, nearly allied to the swallow genus in its form, its mode of flight, and food; it is by no means common, but may be occasionally observed hawking among the branches of large oaks in pursuit of the scarabeus solstitialis, or fernchaffer, which is its favourite food. The balmy evenings, about the middle of this month, offer yet another interesting object to the naturalist; this is the angler's may-fly (ephemera vulgata), the most short-lived in its perfect state of any of the insect race; it emerges from the water, where it passes its aurelia state, about six in the evening, and dies about eleven at night. They usually begin to appear about the fourth of June, and continue in succession nearly a fortnight. On the twenty-first of June happens the summer solstice, or longest day; at this time in the most northern parts of the island there is scarcely any night, the twilight continuing almost from the setting to the rising of the sun; so that it is light enough at midnight to see to read. This season is also properly called Midsummer, though, indeed, the greatest heats are not yet arrived, and there is more warm weather after than before it. THERE are the mowers at work! there are the haymakers! Green swathes of mown grass, haycocks, and wagons ready to bear them away-it is summer indeed. What a fragrance comes floating on the gale from the clover in the standing grass, from the new-made hay, and from those sycamore trees, with all their pendant flowers. It is delicious; and yet one cannot help regretting that the year has advanced so far. There, the wild rose is putting out; the elder is already in flower; they are all beautiful, but saddening signs of the swift-winged time. Let us sit down by this little stream, and enjoy the pleasantness that it presents, without a thought of the future. Ah! this sweet place is just in its pride. The flags have sprung thickly in the bed of the brook, and their yellow flowers are beginning to show themselves. The green locks of the water ranunculus are lifted by the stream, and their flowers form snowy islands on the surface; the water-lilies spread out their leaves upon it like the pallettes of fairy painters; and that opposite bank, what a prodigal scene of vigorous and abundant vegetation it is! There are the blue geraniums as lovely as ever; the meadow-sweet is hastening to put out its foam-like flowers, that species of golden-flowered mustard occupies the connecting space between the land and water, and harebells, the jagged pink lychnis, and flowering grass of various kinds, make the whole bank beautiful. Every plant that is wont to show itself at this season, is in its place, to give its quota to the accustomed character of the spot; every insect to beautify it with its hues, and enliven it with its peculiar sound. The may-flies, in thousands, are come forth to their little day of life, and are flying up and dropping again in their own peculiar way. The stone-fly is found head downwards on the bole of that tree. The midges are celebrating their airy and labyrinthine dances with an amazing adroitness. Dragon-flies of all sizes and colours are hovering and skimming and settling amongst the water-plants, or on some natural twig, evidently full of enjoyment. The great azure bodied one, with its filmy wings, darts past with reckless speed, and slender ones-blue and purple, and dun and black, made as of shining silk by the fingers of some fair lady, and animated for a week or two of summer sunshine by some frolic spell, now pursue each other, and now rest as in sleep. The white-throat goes flying with a curious, cowering motion over the top of the tall grass from one bush to another, where it hops unseen, and repeats its favourite chaw-chaw. The willow-warbler, the mocking-bird of England, maintains its incessant imitations of the swallow, the sparrow, the chaffinch, the white-throat, flitting and chattering in the bushes that overhang the stream. The land-rail repeats its continuous crake-crake from the meadow grass, and the SUMMER'S SONG. 261 water itself ripples on, clear and musical, and chequered with small shadows from many a leaf, and bush, and moving bough. We lift our heads--and in the west what a ruby sun-what a gorgeous assemblage of sunset clouds!WILLIAM HOWITT's Rural Life. SUMMER'S SONG. Who calleth? I am coming, I am coming As I haste I hear discourses While from fragrant fields of clover They say, "Doth not summer come?" Yes, I'm coming, oh, I'm coming. Who calleth? Bird in greenwood, deer in forest, And in every alley known To venturous explorers among men All say, Come, sweet summer, quicken Thy slow steps, for oh! we sicken Of the darkness and the snow; We fain would bud and blow, And we fain would build our nest Where the green boughs shelter best, In the meadows yond' all day. Oh sweet summer, sweetest summer, come again!" Who calleth? All the great sea-waves are weary On the surface of the deep, Dreaming of the mermaids down below. And all the little streams awake; Their silver threads I take, With the filmy morning mist By early sunbeams kiss'd, And wreathe them in a veil about my brow. Of blue, and rose, and grey Fresh spells of colour, and fresh majesty of form. Seated by your waning fire, And storm-beat wanderer on the great earth roaming, BESSIE PARKES. With summer comes the universal yearning after her, in no heart so intensely felt as in that of Poet city-pent; witness the following: ODE TO SUMMER. Oh well may poets make a fuss What joy have I in June's return? But faint the flagging zephyr springs, And turns me "dust to dust." My sun his daily course renews His setting shows more tamely still, Oh but to hear the milk-maid blithe, My grass is of that sort-alas ! That makes no hay, call'd sparrow-grass |