can never be compared to this jewel of Nature, who has placed it in the order of birds at the bottom of the scale of magnitude-maximè miranda in minimis -while all the gifts, which are only shared among others-nimbleness, rapidity, sprightliness, grace, and rich decoration-have been profusely bestowed upon this little favourite. The emerald, the ruby, the topaz, sparkle in its plumage, which is never soiled by the dust of the ground, for its whole life being aerial, it rarely lights on the turf. It dwells in the air, and flitting from flower to flower it seems to be itself a flower in freshness and splendour; it feeds on their nectar, and resides in climates where they blow in perpetual succession; for the few which migrate out of the tropics during the Summer, make but a transitory stay in the temperate zones. They follow the course of the sun, advancing or retiring with him, and flying on the wings of the zephyrs, wanton in eternal Spring." This delicate bird has been universally beloved and admired by every lover of Nature. Audubon compares it to the glittering fragment of a rainbow:-the American Indians give it a name, signifying a sunbeam, expressive of its brilliancy and rapidity of motion, and frequently wear it in their ears as a pendant ;-and the enthusiastic Alexander Wilson, in his history of its habits, makes it the subject of a poem, from which we cannot refrain giving an extract:

When morning dawns, and the bless'd sun again

Lifts his red glories from the eastern main,

Then through our woodbines, wet with glittering dews,
The flower-fed Humming-bird his round pursues;

Sips, with inserted tube, the honied blooms,

And chirps his gratitude as round he roams.
While richest roses, though in crimson dress'd,
Shrink from the splendour of his gorgeous breast;
What heavenly tints in mingling radiance fly;
Each rapid movement gives a different dye;
Like scales of burnish'd gold, they dazzling show,
Now sink to shade-now like a furnace glow!

For further information respecting these fairies of Creation, we refer our readers to the 1st vol. of The Naturalist's Library, published under the auspices of its highly-gifted editor, Sir W. Jardine.

TO AUTUMN.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines, that round the thatch'd-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or in a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath, and all its twined flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too-,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue ;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

THE GNAT.

WHEN by the green-wood side, at Summer eve,
Poetic visions charm my closing eye;
And fairy scenes, that fancy loves to weave,
Shift to wild notes of sweetest minstrelsy;
'Tis thine to range in busy quest of prey,
Thy feathery antlers quivering with delight,
Brush from my lids the hues of heaven away,
And all is solitude, and all is night!

-Ah, now thy barbed shaft, relentless fly,
Unsheaths its terrors in the sultry air!

No guardian sylph, in golden panoply,

Lifts the broad shield and points the glittering spear.
Now near and nearer rush thy whirring wings,
Thy dragon-scales still wet with human gore,
Hark, thy shrill horn its fearful larum rings,

I wake in horror, and dare sleep no more!
ROGERS.

"The poet has here fallen into one little error which a naturalist will perceive as readily as he himself would have detected a bad rhyme, or a false quantity, It is only the male gnat, Culex pipiens, which is adorned with feathery antlers (antenna); and what is a very remarkable fact, this male gnat never sucks blood, the female alone, whose antlers are not feathery, being of a sanguinary disposition."-Insect Miscellanies.

THE WREN.

WHY is the Cuckoo's melody preferr'd,
And Nightingale's rich song so fondly prais'd,
In poet's rhymes? Is there no other bird
Of Nature's minstrelsy, that oft hath rais'd
One's heart to ecstacy and mirth so well?
I judge not how another's taste is caught;
With mine are other birds that bear the bell,

Whose song
hath crowds of happy memories brought;
Such the wood Robin singing in the dell,

And little Wren, that many a time hath sought
Shelter from showers in huts where I may dwell,
In early Spring, the tenant of the plain
Tending my sheep; and still they come to tell
The happy stories of the past again.

THE COWSLIP.

Now in my walk with sweet surprise
I see the first Spring Cowslip rise,
The plant whose pensile flowers
Bend to the earth their beauteous eyes,
In sunshine, as in showers.

Low, on a mossy bank it grew,
Where lichens purple, red, and blue,

Among the verdure crept ;
Its yellow ringlets, dropping dew,
The breezes lightly swept.

A bee had nestled on its bloom,
He shook abroad their rich perfume,
Then fled in airy rings;
His place a butterfly assumes
Glancing his glorious wings.

Oh, welcome, as a friend! I cried,
A friend through many a season tried,
And never sought in vain,

When May, with Flora at her side,
Is dancing on the plain.

CLARE.

Shelter'd by Nature's graceful hand,
In briery glens, o'er pasture land,
The fairy tribes we meet,

Gay in the milk-maid's path they stand,
They kiss her tripping feet.

From Winter's farm-yard bondage freed
The cattle bounding o'er the mead,
Where green the herbage grows,
Among the fragrant blossoms feed,
Upon thy tufts repose.

Tossing his fore-lock o'er his mane
The foal, at rest upon the plain,
Sports with thy flexile stalk;
Yet stoops his little neck in vain
it in his walk.

To crop

Where thick thy primrose blossoms play,
Lovely and innocent as they,

O'er coppice lawns and dells,
In bands the village children stray
To pluck thy honied bells:

Whose simple sweets with curious skill
The frugal cottage-dames distil,

Nor envy France the vine; While many a festal cup they fill Of Britain's homely wine.

Perhaps from Nature's earliest May,
Imperishable 'midst decay,

Thy self-renewing race

Have breath'd their balmy lives away
In this neglected place.

And oh till Nature's final doom
Here unmolested may they bloom,