Varieties.
The elevated and marshalled flight of wild geese seems dictated by geometrical instinct; shaped like a wedge, the whole body cuts the air with less exertion to separate individuals, and it is conjectured that the change of form from an inverted V, A, L, or a straight line, is occasioned by the leader of the van quitting his post at the point of the angle, through fatigue, dropping into the rear, leaving his place to be occupied by another.
The Lady-bird.—The following address to the lady-bird is from the German. Part of the second verse, most of my young friends are acquainted with:
“Lady-bird! lady-bird! pretty one stay;
Come, sit on my finger, so happy and gay.
With me shall no mischief betide thee.
No harm would I do thee, no foeman is here—
I only would gaze on thy beauties so dear,
These beautiful winglets beside thee.
Lady-bird! lady-bird! fly away home;
Your house is on fire! your children will roam.
List, list to their cry and bewailing!
The pitiless spider is weaving their doom!
Then lady-bird! lady-bird! fly away home,
Hark, hark to thy children’s bewailing!”
Winter. Mary Howitt has beautifully described the contrast between the rich and the poor at this season of the year:
“In rich men’s halls the fire is piled,
And furry robes keep out the weather;
In poor men’s huts the fire is low,
Through broken panes the keen winds blow,
And old and young are cold together.
Oh, poverty is disconsolate!
Its pains are many, its foes are strong.
The rich man, in his jovial cheer,
Wishes ’twas winter all the year;
The poor man, ’mid his wants profound,
With all his little children round,
Prays God that winter be not long.”
Signs of the weather. An English writer, by the name of Jennet, thus describes the signs of the weather:
“The hollow winds begin to blow,
The clouds look black, the glass is low;
The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep,
And spiders from their cobwebs peep.
Last night the sun went pale to bed,
The moon in halos hid her head;
Hark! how the chairs and tables crack!
Old Betty’s joints are on the rack;
Her corns with shooting pains torment her,
And to her bed untimely send her—
Loud quack the ducks, the sea-fowl cry,
The distant hills are looking nigh.
How restless are the snorting swine!
The busy flies disturb the kine;
Low on the grass, the swallow wings;
The cricket, too, how sharp she sings!
Puss, on the hearth, with velvet paws
Sits wiping o’er her whiskered jaws;
The smoke from chimneys right ascends—
Then spreading back to earth it bends;
Through the clear stream, the fishes rise
And nimbly catch the incautious flies.
The glow-worms num’rous, clear and bright,
Illumined the dewy hill last night!
At dusk, the squalid toad was seen
Like quadruped stalk o’er the green.
The whirling wind the dust obeys,
And in the rapid eddy plays;
The frog has changed his yellow vest,
And in a russet coat is dress’d.
Behold the rooks, how odd their flight!
They imitate the gliding kite;
In fiery red, the sun doth rise,
Then wades through clouds to mount the skies.
’T will surely rain, we see with sorrow,
No working in the fields to-morrow.”
The amaranth is one of the latest flowers in autumn, and when the plant is dead, the flowers still retain their rich scarlet color. The ancients associated it with supreme honors, choosing it to adorn the brows of their gods. Poets have sometimes mingled its bright hue with the dark and gloomy cypress, wishing to express that their sorrows were combined with everlasting recollections. Homer, an ancient poet, tells us that at the funeral of a great warrior, named Achilles, the Greeks wore crowns of amaranth.
