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APRIL.

"Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around,
Full swell the woods; and every music wakes,
Mix'd in wild concert with the warbling brooks.
Increased the distant bleating of the hills,
And hollow lowes responsive from the vales."

THOMSON.

VIRGIL has elegantly given to the vernal season the epithet of blushing, because the shoots and buds of trees assume a ruddy appearance, previous to throwing out their leaves. This beautiful effect is very obvious in the deep beech woods of Gloucestershire. Unenlivened by that silver rind, and those multifarious tintings that diversify the stem and branches of the birch, they present a dreary appearance through the winter months. But in April a slight change of hue becomes perceptible. A casual observer might ascribe it to a drier air, a clearer atmosphere, or to those transient gleams of sunshine which seem to light up the face of nature with a smile. But the effect

F

arises from that secret renovation which the aged fathers of the forest, and their sapling sons, are now experiencing. The swelling buds are first brown, then bronze, then of a reddish hue, and thus they continue till a light green bough is seen to wave, as if in triumph, from some warm sheltered nook. This is the signal for a general foliation; and he who retires in the evening, casting a look at his beloved woods, rather wishing, than expecting, that another week will cover them with leaves, often rejoices the next morning, to observe that the whole forest has burst into greenness and luxuriance.

We speak of the miracles of nature, but this is only another name for an effect of which the cause is God. He folds up the tender germ in its russet case, and covers it with a coating that preserves it uninjured amid the raging of those storms which are ministers of his, and do his pleaThe smallest leaves present some traces of his beneficence-from him is derived their balmy odours, their hues, their delicate ramifications, their endless variety of forms. Happy are those who confess him in his works-the Creator in the things created.

sure.

"Or what they view of beautiful or grand
In nature, from the broad majestic oak
To the green leaf, that twinkles in the sun,

Prompts with remembrance of a present God!
His presence, who made all so fair, perceived,
Makes all still fairer."

COWPER.

It is foreign to the subject of this section to enlarge minutely on the subject of vegetable physiology, but I shall briefly notice the hand of Deity, as displayed in the gradual formation and expansion of a leafbud, and then pass on.

Tender embryos, wrapped up with a compactness which no art can imitate, compose what we call the bud. The bud itself is inclosed in scales, which scales are formed from the remains of past leaves, and the rudiments of new ones. When opened in this rudimental state, it presents the appearance of being filled with coarse moist cotton, but when subjected to a high magnifier, it displays much exquisite and appropriate machinery.

Short and thick vesssels, that spring from the larger reservoirs of the inner bark, form the midrib of the leaves; others of a fine and silky texture diverge from either side, and become interlaced; the pabulum, a kind of thick juice that flows from the vessels of the bark, then settles on them in little bladders, and appears like a green substance. This is again crossed with interlacing fibres, which are succeeded by another layer of bladders, and thus the process goes on, till the

cuticle, that fine membrane which excludes every thing of an injurious nature, enwraps the whole, as with a firm and adhesive coating. But what is the use of that glutinous liquor, or pabulum, which appears like little bladders? It thickens the leaf, and serves to moisten the component parts. The leaf-scales also perform an important office; they remain stationary, tightly brace, compress the whole together, and preserve it from any extraneous injury.

When the leaf is nearly completed, the edges exhibit, on being opened, a double row of bubbles, sparkling like brilliants; these generally divide, and, when no longer necessary, dry up, and leave horny points. The leaf then emerges to life and light, and answers the same purpose for the support of vegetable, as the lungs for that of animal life. It is an organ of respiration to the parent tree, supplying, by the means of absorbent vessels, in a great degree, the want of water to the rootdrawing in the atmospheric air, purifying the most obnoxious, and breathing it out again in a state fit for respiration. Yet this important organ is delicate and fragile, composed of the finest network, and merely defended by a tender coating from external injury.

Leaves also heighten the effect of landscape scenery, by their pleasing colours, and the exqui

site variety of their forms. Who does not acknowledge their magic effect in the deep gloom, the lighter tints, the ever varying hues of the retiring woodland, or beneath the shade of overarching trees? How sportive, then, is the light as it appears through the quivering branches, dancing as they dance, intermingling shade and sunshine, now darkening, and now enlightening the chequered earth, as the leaves are agitated by the wind! How magic, too, the effect which they produce, when the moonbeams seem to glide between them, and the forest walks now appear to open into glades full of splendour and repose, on which her bright cold beams shine full and clear, and now again into lengthened vistas of strange and mysterious loneliness!

The gradual or rapid unfolding of a leaf is also one of Nature's way-marks. It silently proclaims the gradual progress of the seasons, and points out the period when certain seeds and flowers should be committed to the earth.

Linnæus exhorted his hardy countrymen to watch carefully the expanding and unfolding of buds and leaves in different forest trees, rightly judging that the husbandman might derive important hints from thus observing them.

Harold Barch, acting on this idea, accurately noted the epochs at which different species budded