But at Christmas, as in May,
Thou art ever brisk and gay;
Thy continued song we hear,
Trilling, thrilling, all the year.

Every day and every night
Bring to thee the same delight;
Winter, Summer, cold, or hot,
Late, or early, matters not ;
Mirth and music still declare

Thou art ever void of care.

Whilst with sorrows, or with fears,
We destroy our days and years,
Thou, with constant joy and song,
Every minute dost prolong,
Making thus thy little span

Longer than the age of man.

REV. T. COLE.

Mr. White, speaking of the Hearth-Cricket, Acheta domestica, thus writes in his History of Selborne:-"Tender insects that live abroad either enjoy only the short period of one Summer, or else doze away the cold uncomfortable months in profound slumbers; but these, residing as it were in a torrid zone, are always alert and merry, a good Christmas fire is to them, what the dogdays are to others." Letter xlvii. Like the field-cricket, A. campestris, they are sometimes kept for their music: and the learned Scaliger took so great a fancy to their song, that he was accustomed to keep them in a box in his study. Milton chose for his contemplative pleasures a spot where crickets resorted:

Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,

Far from all resort of mirth,

Save the cricket on the hearth.

Il Penseroso.

Goldsmith happily introduces this little domestic, in his poem of Edwin and Angelina :

Around in sympathetic mirth,

Its tricks the kitten tries;

The Cricket chirrups on the hearth,

The crackling faggot flies.

Cowper has also given an excellent translation of Vincent Bourne's Ode to the Cricket.

THE BUTTERFLY'S FIRST FLIGHT.

THOU hast burst from thy prison,

Bright child of the air,

Like a spirit just risen

From its mansion of care.

Thou art joyously winging
Thy first ardent flight,
Where the gay lark is singing
Her notes of delight :

Where the sunbeams are throwing

Their glories on thine,
Till thy colours are glowing

With tints more divine.

Then tasting new pleasure

In summer's green bowers,
Reposing at leisure

On fresh opened flowers;

Or delighted to hover

Around them to see
Whose charms, airy rover,

Bloom sweetest for thee;

And fondly inhaling

Their fragrance, till day
From thy bright eye is failing

And fading away.

Then seeking some blossom

Which looks to the West,

Thou dost find in its bosom
Sweet shelter and rest.

And there dost betake thee

Till darkness is o'er,

And the sunbeams awake thee

To pleasure once more.

New Monthly Magazine.

"See!" exclaims Linnæus, "the large elegant painted wings of the Butterfly, four in number, covered with small imbricated scales; with these it sustains itself in the air the whole day, rivalling the flight of birds and the brilliancy of the peacock. Consider this insect through the wonderful progress of its life; how different is the first period of its being from the second, and both from the parent insect; its changes are an inexplicable enigma to us : we see a green Caterpillar furnished with sixteen legs, creeping, hairy, and feeding upon the leaves of a plant; this is changed into a Chrysalis, smooth, of a golden lustre, hanging suspended to a fixed point, without feet, and subsisting without food: this insect again undergoes another transformation, acquires wings and six feet, and becomes a variegated Butterfly, living by suction upon the honey of plants. What has Nature produced more worthy of admiration?"-Aman. Acad. vol. 2.

THE METAMORPHOSIS.

THE helpless crawling caterpillar trace,
From the first period of his reptile race.
Cloth'd in dishonour, on the leafy spray
Unseen he wears his silent hours away;
Till satiate grown of all that life supplies,
Self-taught the voluntary martyr dies.
Deep under earth his darkling course he bends,
And to the tomb, a willing guest, descends.
There, long secluded in his lonely cell,
Forgets the sun, and bids the world farewell.
O'er the wide wastes the wintry tempests reign,
And driving snows usurp the frozen plain :
In vain the tempest beats, the whirlwind blows;
No storms can violate his grave's repose.
But when revolving months have won their way,
When smile the woods, and when the zephyrs play,

When laughs the vivid world in Summer's bloom,
He bursts; and flies triumphant from the tomb;
And while his new-born beauties he displays,
With conscious joy his alter'd form surveys.
Mark, while he moves amid the sunny beam,
O'er his soft wings the varying lustres gleam.
Launch'd into air, on purple plumes he soars,
Gay Nature's face with wanton glance explores ;
Proud of his varying beauties wings his way,

And spoils the fairest flowers, himself more fair than they. 'And deems weak man the future promise vain,

When worms can die, and glorious rise again?'

ANONYMOUS, in Haworth's Lepid. Brit.

RED AND WHITE ROSES:

BY THOMAS CAREW, 1635.

READ, in these Roses, the sad story
Of my hard fate, and your own glory;
In the White you may discover,
The paleness of a fainting lover ;
In the Red, the flame still feeding

On my heart, with fresh wounds bleeding.
The White will tell you how I languish,
And the Red express my anguish :
The White my innocence displaying,
The Red my martyrdom betraying;
The frowns that on your brow resided
Have these roses thus divided :-

Oh! let your smiles but clear the weather,
And then they both shall grow together.

Among the

Just as the opening flowers are born,
green and grassy meads
Where the cowslips hang their heads;
Or by hedge-rows, while the dew
Glitters on the hare-bell blue.
Then on eager wing art flown,
To thymy hillocks on the down;
Or to revel on the broom;

Or suck the clover's crimson bloom;
Murmuring still, thou busy bee,
Thy little ode to industry!

The Bee, Apis mellifica, has long attracted universal attention, on account of its wonderful economy and ingenuity. From the nectareous juices of flowers, it collects its delicious honey. Were it not for "Nature's confectioner, the