"What to them is weather?
What are stormy showers?
Buttercups and daisies-

Are these human flowers?
He who gave them hardship,

And a life of care,

Gives them likewise hardy strength

And patient hearts to bear."

The English field daisy, as shown in our illustration on this page, grows up somewhat like our dandelion, each flower being borne upon a long slender stalk. The

many petals are narrow, white, tipped with a slight tinge of crimson, and are placed in a single row around the centre. This is the single, or wild variety; but cultivation has rendered the flower double, and has developed many beautiful colors and shades. The "hen and chickens" is one of these experimental varieties, in which the main flower-head is surrounded by several smaller ones. Beside this, called prolifera, there are the large double, and the double-quilled, the latter being a deep rich crimson, with globular heads, and usually cultivated in pots. There are also choice varieties of white, blush, rosecolor, striped, and other tints. Division of the plants is said to be an easy and successThe daisy is ful way of propagation. sometimes used as a border for flower-beds, and patches of these lovely little flowers set in the turf of lawns frequently mown, form a very pretty sight for the lover of flowers.

Burns's beautiful but somewhat melancholy lines on a mountain daisy, on turning one down with the plow in the month of April, have been often quoted, but will not lose their charm from re-reading:

"Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem:

To spare thee now is past my power,
Thou bonnie gem.

"Such is the fate of artless maid, Sweet floweret of the rural shadeľ By love's simplicity betrayed,

And guileless trust,

Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid
Low in the dust.

"Such is the fate of simple Bard,
On life's rough ocean luckless starred!
Unskillful he to note the card

Of prudent lore,

Till billows rage, and gales blow hard,
And whelm him o'er.

"Such fate to suffering worth is given,
Who long with wants and woes has striven,
By human pride or cunning driven
To mis'ry's brink,

Till, wrenched of ev'ry stay but Heaven,
He, ruined, sink!

"Even thou who mournst the Daisy's fate,
That fate is thine-no distant date
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate,
Full on thy bloom,

Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight
Shall be thy doom!"

One more tribute to the daisy and we have done. Our readers will not be inclined, we think, to weary over the perusal of Wordsworth's beautiful lines addressed to this little flower:

"In youth from rock to rock I went,
From hill to hill in discontent
Of pleasure high and turbulent

Most pleased when most uneasy;
But now my own delights I make,-
My thirst at every rill can slake,
And gladly Nature's love partake
Of thee, sweet Daisy !

"When Winter decks his few gray hairs,
Thee in the scanty wreath he wears;
Spring parts the clouds with softest airs,

That she may sun thee;

Whole summer flelds are thine by right;
And Autumn, melancholy wight!
Doth in thy crimson head delight

When rains are on thee.

"In shoals and bands, a morrice train,
Thou greetest the traveller in the lane;
If welcome once thou countest it gain;
Thou art not daunted,

Nor carest if thou be set at nought;
And oft alone, in nooks remote
We meet thee like a pleasant thought,
When such are wanted.

"Be Violets in their secret mews

The flowers the wanton Zephyrs choose;
Proud be the Rose, with rains and dews
Her head impearling;

Thou livest with less ambitious aim,
Yet hast not gone without thy fame;
Thou art indeed by many a claim
The Poet's darling.

"If to a rock from rains he fly,
Or, some bright day of April sky,

Imprisoned by hot sunshine lie

Near the green holly,

And wearily at length should fare, He needs but look about, and there Thou art-a Friend at hand, to scare His melancholy.

"A hundred times, by rock or bower, Ere thus I have lain couched an hour, Have I derived from thy sweet power

Some apprehension;

Some steady love; some brief delight; Some memory that had taken flight; Some chime of fancy wrong or right; Or stray invention.

"If stately passions in me burn,

And one chance look to thee should turn,
I drink out of an humbler urn
A lowlier pleasure;

The homely sympathy that heeds
The common life, our nature breeds;
A wisdom fitted to the needs

Of hearts at leisure.

"When, smitten by the morning ray,
I see thee rise, alert and gay,
Then, cheerful Flower! my spirits play
With kindred gladness:

And when, at dusk, by dews opprest
Thou sink'st, the image of thy rest
Hath often eased my pensive breast
Of careful sadness.

"And all day long I number yet,

All seasons through, another debt,
Which I, wherever thou art met,
To thee am owing;

An instinct call it, a blind sense;
A happy, genial influence,
Coming one knows not how, nor whence,
Nor whither going.

"Child of the year! that round dost run

Thy course, bold lover of the sun,
And cheerful when the day's begun
As morning Leveret,

Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain;
Dear shalt thou be to future men
As in old time;-thou not in vain
Art Nature's favorite."

It was strawberry time, and, like most other children, little Deena West felt it to be the happiest moment of her life when she had permission to take her bright tin pail and go to the fields on a berrying expedition. It was so delightful to look for the red tempting berries, and when she had found them, to pick them as fast as she could, calling out to her companions that she had found "such a thick spot!" A great many of the berries went into her mouth instead of the pail, it must be confessed, and perhaps that was what made her lips look so much like two ripe strawberries.

Deena usually had companions when she went berrying, but one bright morning she could find no one to go with her, and so concluded to go alone, bearing in mind the fact that perhaps her pail would be fuller than if she had company. Not that she was very selfish in such matters, but she was inclined to console herself somehow for her loneliness.

So, with her broad-brimmed hat tied securely under her chin, and her hands encased in the little cotton mittens her mother had made to keep her hands from getting poisoned or sunburnt, she departed, swinging her pail, and thinking how full it should be before she went home. Then,

she thought, she would hull the berries with her very own fingers, and how nice it would be to have them for tea! For Deena was fond of goodies, and strawberries and cream stood in her estimation exactly on a level with ice-cream. Imagination could go no further.

On she went, across the road, climbing over the stone wall, going through the wide orchard to reach the field just beyond. The robins were singing sweetly among the apple trees, and Deena listened to their mellow notes and thought to herself how funny it was that one of them, with a wonderfully bright breast, should keep saying so earnestly, "Kill him, cure him! Kill him, cure him!" while he eyed her as if he thought she could do something about it.

"I should think," she mused, "that it would be better to cure him first, and then-but no! what would be the use, if he's got to be killed, after all? And how anybody could be killed and then cured is more than I know. There don't seem to be much sense in it, anyway, and I don't believe the robins know themselves." Then she added aloud to the robin, "I guess you've made a mistake, Mr. Robin, for folks can't be cured after they're killed, not if they're real dead, you know.

Leastways, I never heard of such a thing. But perhaps," she added, politely, as an after-thought, "perhaps I don't understand you right."

The robin stared at her fixedly for a second or two, and then, giving his broad tail a contemptuous flirt, he flew away to another tree, calling out, "O! O! O!" as much as to say, "I should think you didn't understand! Kill him, cure him,' indeed! What nonsense!"

"Well," thought Deena, as she went on, "he's nothing but a robin, anyway, and he needn't have been provoked! I'm sure it sounded just like kill him, cure him,' and how was I to know?"

grasses, so she stepped carefully forward, and, looking down, saw on the other side of the bough a little nest snugly resting in its place, and five little speckled eggs laid close together in it. There were wild flowers blossoming all around it, and altogether it was a very pretty sight to see.

Deena forgot her precious strawberries, and some of them were spilled on the ground as she bent over the sparrow's nest in speechless delight. Such cunning little eggs as they were, and such a nice little nest! O, how glad she was that she had found it, all alone by herself! Then she remembered the frightened bird, and drew away quietly, hoping to see her go back to

One more wall to climb, and then Deena was in the strawberry field, which, after all, was not far from the house, being within calling distance. The patches of vines were scattered all over the field, and Deena went from one to another, finding the berries quite ripe and thick. Full of ambition to get her pail full, she picked very steadily, troubled with no fear but that of seeing a snake: but, to her great delight, not one was visible. The time flew, the sun grew hotter and hotter, and the pail was almost full. Suddenly, as Deena stepped toward the fallen limb of a tree that lay on the ground, a little brown bird flew up with a chitter of alarm. Deena knew that it was a ground sparrow, and that they build their nests among the

her tiny home. She did not watch in vain, for presently the sparrow flew back, looked around suspiciously, and then, as all was still, she disappeared from sight, and Deena was right in conjecturing that she had settled down upon her nest.

Full of the precious discovery, Deena began again to pick berries, busily thinking all the while whether she should tell any one about it or not. At first she thought it would be very nice to tell her two particular friends and playmates, Frank and Jessie Lawrence, that she had something to show them, and then lead them to the nest and surprise them with it. But she remembered that her mother had told her that it was cruel to disturb little birds, and if she ever found any nests she must