THE NAUTILUS.

Up with thy thin transparent sail,
Thou tiny mariner !—The gale
Comes gently from the land, and brings
The odour of all lovely things

That Zephyr, in his wanton play,
Scatters in Spring's triumphant way;
Of primrose pale, and violet,
And young anemone, beset
By thousand spikes of every hue,
Purple and scarlet, white and blue:
And every breeze that sweeps the earth
Brings the sweet sounds of love and mirth;
The shrilly pipe of things unseen
That pitter in the meadows green;
The linnet's love-sick melody,
The laverock's carol loud and high;
And mellow'd, as from distance borne,
The music of the shepherd's horn.

Up, little Nautilus! Thy day
Of life and joy is come:-away!
The ocean's flood, that gleams so bright
Beneath the morning's ruddy light,
With gentlest surge scarce ripples o'er
The lucid gems that pave the shore;
Each billow wears its little spray,
As maids wear wreaths on holiday;
And maid ne'er danced on velvet green
More blithely round the May's young queen,
Than thou shalt dance o'er yon bright sea

That woos thy prow so lovingly.
Then lift thy sail!-'Tis shame to rest,
Here on the sand, thy pearly breast,—

Away! thou first of mariners :-
Give to the wind all idle fears;
Thy freight demands no jealous care,-
Yet navies might be proud to bear
The wondrous wealth, the unbought spell,
That loads thy ruby-cinctur'd shell.
A heart is there to Nature true,
Which wrath nor envy ever knew,—
A heart that calls no creature foe,
And ne'er design'd another's woe ;-
A heart whose joy o'erflows its home,
Simply because sweet Spring is come.

Up, beauteous Nautilus !—Away!
The idle Muse that chides thy stay
Shall watch thee long with anxious eye,
O'er thy bright course delighted fly;
And when black storms deform the main,
Cry welcome to the sands again!

Heaven grant, that she through life's wide sea

May sail as innocent as thee;

And homeward turn'd, like thee may find
Sure refuge from the wave and wind.

REV. E. BARNARD.

Few objects in nature have excited greater admiration than the elegant shell of the Nautilus, Argonauta Argo. It is exceedingly thin and fragile, of a paper-like substance, and divided into as many as forty chambers or compartments, through every one of which a portion of its body passes, connected as it were, by a thread. In calm Summer days it may occasionally be seen steering its little bark on the surface of the Mediterranean. The Roman naturalist, Pliny, thus delineates its habits. "Among the principal wonders of Nature is the animal called Nautilos or Pompilos. It ascends to the surface of the sea, in a supine posture, and gradually raising itself up, forces out, by means of a tube, all the water from the shell, in order that it may swim more readily; then, throwing back the two foremost arms, it displays between them a membrane of wonderful tenuity, which acts as a sail, while, with the remaining arms, it rows itself along, the tail in the middle acting as a helm to direct its course, and thus it pursues its voyage; and if alarmed by any appearance of danger, takes in the water, and descends."-Nat- Hist. ix. 29. The Nautilus is also well described in the following beautiful lines by Montgomery :

Light as a flake of foam upon the wind,
Keel upward from the deep emerg'd a shell
Shap'd like the moon ere half her horn is fill'd;

Fraught with young life, it righted as it rose,
And mov'd at will along the yielding water.
The native pilot of this little bark

Put out a tier of oars on either side,
Spread to the wafting breeze a two-fold sail,
And mounted up and glided down the billow
In happy freedom, pleas'd to feel the air,
And wander in the luxury of light.

Pelican Island.

It has been supposed by some naturalists that the Sepia or Cuttle fish takes possession of the shell of the Nautilus, and uses it as a boat after having destroyed its original inhabitant. In India they form drinking-cups of the Nautilus Pompilius, which are rendered valuable by being richly enchased. For other interesting particulars respecting the Nautilus, see Mag. of Nat. Hist., vol. 1, p. 28, and vol. 3, pp. 255 and 528.

THE CORAL-GROVE.

DEEP in the wave is a Coral-grove,
Where the purple mullet and gold-fish rove,
Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue,
That never are wet with falling dew,

But in bright and changeful beauty shine,
Far down in the green and glassy brine.
The floor is of sand like the mountain-drift,
And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow;
From coral rocks the sea-plants lift

Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow:
The water is calm and still below,

For the winds and waves are absent there;
And the sands are bright as the stars that glow
In the motionless fields of upper air.
There with its waving blade of green,

The sea-flag streams through the silent water;
And the crimson leaf of the dulse* is seen

To blush, like a banner bath'd in slaughter:

There, with a slight and easy motion,

The fan-coral sweeps through the clear deep sea;

* A term applied to the sea-weeds composing the genus, Ulva or laver.

And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean
Are bending like corn on the upland lea:
And life, in rare and beautiful forms,

Is sporting amidst those bowers of stone,
And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms
Has made the top of the waves his own:
And when the ship from his fury flies,
Where the myriad voices of ocean roar,
When the wind-god frowns in the murky skies,
And demons are waiting the wreck on shore ;-
Then far below in the peaceful sea,

The purple mullet and gold-fish rove,
Where the waters murmur tranquilly

Through the bending twigs of the Coral-grove.

J. G. PERCIVAL.

Naturalists have not yet satisfactorily ascertained to what situation in the system of Nature, belong the marine substances, termed by Linnæus Corallina. Some refer them to the animal, and others to the vegetable kingdom. When living, the Corallina are of a beautiful reddish or purple colour, which they lose after death, and when exposed to the action of the sun and air, assume a great variety of tints. They are generally found on rocky shores, attached to rocks or marine plants. For a description of coral reefs, see Captain Basil Hall's Voyage to the Loo-Choo Islands, in the Chinese Sea.

THE TOAD.

THOU ugly thing, that hoarsely croak'st at night
With hollow voice, upon the margin green

Of pond or river, I, a boy, have seen
Thy squatted form, and started with affright.
What if thine eye be beautifully bright,
E'en as the eagle's, yet thy rugged back,
And flatten'd head, and legs, are dusky black :
Thy mouth,-O close it, for I dread the sight.
Go, creep into the heart of some huge stone,
Or hollow trunk, or lob into the mud

And live, vile beast, as though thou lived'st not.
Thus I, when hark! "O why reproach my lot ?"
A voice replied, low murmuring from the flood,
"A purpose I may serve to thee unknown."

J. R.

The Toad, Bufo vulgaris, is so familiar to every one that a lengthened description is superfluous. Its extremely forbidding appearance has obtained for this reptile a very unjust character. It is persecuted and murdered wherever it appears, on the supposition merely that because it is ugly, it must in consequence be venomous. Its eyes are proverbially beautiful. Shakspeare, in Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5., thus notices them ;

Some say, the lark and loathed toad change eyes.

The progress of Natural Philosophy has destroyed much of the beauty of another passage of Shakspeare ;

Sweet are the uses of adversity;

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

As you like it, ii. 1.

Toads feed chiefly on insects and worms. In the winter they hybernate, eating no food, but do not become actually torpid. Many instances are on record of these reptiles having been found in blocks of stone or enclosed in the trunks of trees, where it is supposed they had remained for a number of years; -but none of these cases appear well authenticated, at least so far as to prove that the atmospheric air was totally excluded, See Literary Gazette, March, 1831, and Jesse's Gleanings in Nat. Hist., p. 115.

OBERON'S FEAST.

A LITTLE mushroom table spread;
After short prayers, they set on bread,
A moon-parch'd grain of purest wheat,
With some small glittering grit, to eat
His choicest bits with; then in a trice
They make a feast less great than nice.
But, all this while his eye is serv'd,
We must not think his ear is starv'd;
But that there was in place, to stir
His spleen, the chirring grasshopper,
The merry cricket, puling fly,
The piping gnat, for minstrelsy:
And now we must imagine first

The elves present, to quench his thirst