Darwin.
These little animals are found to extinguish their lamps between eleven and twelve at night.
Old May-day is the usual time for turning out cattle into the pastures, though frequently then very bare of grass. The milk soon becomes more copious, and of finer quality, from the juices of the young grass; and it is in this month that the making of cheese is usually begun in the dairies. Cheshire, Wiltshire, and the low parts of Gloucestershire, are the tracts in England most celebrated for the best cheese.
Many trees and shrubs flower in May, such as the oak, beech, maple, sycamore, barberry, laburnum, horse-chestnut, lilac, mountain ash, and Guelder rose; of the more humble plants the most remarkable are the lily of the valley, and woodroof in woods, the male orchis in meadows, and the lychnis, or cuckoo flower, on hedge-banks.
This month is not a very busy season for the farmer. Some sowing remains to be done in late years; and in forward ones, the weeds, which spring up abundantly in fields and gardens, require to be kept under. The husbandman now looks forward with anxious hope to the reward of his industry:—
Be gracious, Heaven! for now laborious man
Has done his part. Ye fost’ring breezes, blow!
Ye soft’ning dews, ye tender show’rs descend;
And temper all, thou world-receiving sun,
Into the perfect year!
Thomson.
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
The Horse-chestnut. Æschylus Hippocastanum.
Dedicated to St. Barnardine of Sienna.