ing home buds and flowers for his young mistress. April is she herself, issuing forth adorned with them. To these she adds, of her own rearing, columbines, jonquilles, cuckoo flowers, lilies of the valley, primroses, violets, cowslips, saxifrage, stocks, all beautiful,

but each in its own way; and

then come the daisies and the buttercups, silver and gold.

Should the season be fine, the delicate, sprouting green of the trees and shrubs are now interspersed with the flowers of the almond tree, of the cherry plum, of the double-flowering cherry, the bird cherry, the sweet-scented (and sweetnamed) honeysuckle, hypericum, the blackthorn, or sloe, the laburnum, or gold chain, (and a beautiful specimen of which we have at Holly Lodge, said to be planted by Sir John

Moore), the apricot, peach, and nectarine; lilacs, laurustinuses, the laurus vulgaris (so called, more properly the lauro-cerasus), and lastly, the real laurel of old, or bay tree, which the Greeks associate with every species of victory-which Sophocles and Epaminondas thought of with reverence-which Caesar wore, and with which Petrarch was crowned in the capitol.

Now comes the swallow, which the Greeks used to welcome with

a popular song. The other birds of passage follow by degrees, and all the singing birds are full of life, and saturate the trees with music. The nightingale is heard in the evening, and about the middle of the month we hear the cuckoo repeating, at intervals, it too-fleeting notes, "cu-cu, cu-cu," as the old poets write it.

April is proverbial for its fickle weather. All its bright promises may be sometimes retarded, sometimes blighted, by the return of frosty winds, and the domestic cultivator of flowers should take particular care of them. Therefore, Miss Susan, take care of your flowers. Now is the time for the plants of young annuals, anemonies, ranunculuses, and hyacinth roots, past flowering, to be taken up and preserved, and autumnal flowering bulbs to be taken up and transplanted. Shrubs, on very fine days, may be brought into the balconies, in order to refresh the eyes with the spring green; and now is the time for my young friends, both boys and girls, to be busily employed in arranging the tendrils of the climbing plants, so

as to add the grace of art to the charms of nature. Well done! the more the light is seen through the leaves of plants, the finer and more vivid they look. They seem to show the amber sunshine that nourished them.

April is a celebrated month for other green things save those belonging to the botanical department. The first of April is long celebrated for "fool-making," just as if there were not fools enough in this foolish world. Fifty years ago, when buckles were worn in the shoes, a boy would meet a person in the street with, "Sir, if you please, your shoe is unbuckled," and the moment Old Peter Parley would look down towards his feet, the young urchin would cry,

66

'Ah, you April fool!" Twenty years ago, when buckles were wholly disused, the urchin's cry was, Sir, your shoe is untied," and if the shoe-wearer lowered his eyes, he was hailed as his buckled predecessor had been with the same,- 66 Ah, you April fool!" Now, when neither buckles nor shoes are worn, the waggery of the day is, as I learned to my discomfiture last year, "Sir, there is something out of your pocket!" "Where?" "There." "What?" "Your

hand, sir!-Ah, you April fool!" Or else some lady is humbly bowed to, and gravely addressed with, "Madam, I beg your pardon, but have something on your face." you very much obliged to you. What is it?" Ah, you April fool!"

'Indeed, my man; I am

"Your nose, ma'am.

The tricks are as various as the month of April is various. One who has yet to know the humours of the day is sent to the Zoological

Gardens to see the lions washed. This used to be performed in the Tower ditch, but now no lions are in the Tower, and the ditch is made dry ground. It seems one of the impossibilities of the day. It is not quite obsolete, however, to send a green youth to the cobbler's for a pennyworth of the best stirrup oil, or to the poulterer's for half-a-pint of pigeon's milk; to the furniture broker's for a pair of worsted bellows; or to the bookseller's for the "Life and Adventures of Eve's Grandmother."

The making of April fools is a very ancient practice, and may be traced to remote times in the annals of Hindostan, China, Persia, and other Eastern nations. It is also seen among the Teutonic tribes. The Hindoos, on the Hali festival, make a subject of diver