golden-crested wren, from its diminutive size and solitary habits, is not often noticed; and may be easily overlooked; but it is very abundant where there are plantations of sprucetrees, to which they are extremely partial, hanging their nests to the under-surface of the lower branches. Though apparently of so delicate a nature, they remain with us all the winter and appear to suffer less from cold than even many of our hard-billed species.

The blackbird whistles; the titmouse pulls straws out of the thatch, in search of insects; and linnets congregate. Pullets begin to lay; young lambs are dropped now in southern counties, but the more common time of lambing is in March. The fieldfares, redwings, skylarks, and titlarks, resort to watered meadows for food, and are, in part, supported by the gnats which are on the snow near the water. The house-sparrow chirps, and the bat is now seen. As the cold grows more intense, various kinds of sea-fowl quit the bleak open shores, and come up the rivers, where they offer an unusual prey to the fowler.

RURAL OCCUPATIONS.

The most important business of the farmer this month, is to feed and comfort his dependent animals: his cattle in their stalls and straw-yards; his sheep in warm and sheltered enclosures, giving them hay, straw, turnips, etc.: looking well after his flocks that they be not lost in snows; and in forward districts, as in the neighbourhood of London, housing and carefully feeding young lambs and calves for the market. Bee-hives require to be examined, and, if necessary, food supplied. In frosts, fishponds must have holes broken in the ice, to allow the fish the necessary air. Deer in parks also require the fostering care of man to supply them with hay, branches of trees, etc.; and game in the woods demand frequently the same attention. Buck-wheat is sown in the corners and open spaces in woods, as it bears very well the shade of trees, and is stacked in the ridings for the game. In other places corn, and hempseed are given them in seasons of great severity. Thrashing is now a regular employment, in some parts of the country, going on even by candle-light. Farming implements are

repaired; drains, ditches, etc. kept open; manure is led out; and in particular situations, in favourable weather, a little ploughing is done, and common spring-wheat sown. Fruit-trees are pruned and dug round: hop-grounds trenched, and orchards planted. Timber is felled, and stumps and roots cut up to burn. ́ Timber trees are planted, and tree-seeds sown.

ANGLING.

Most fresh-water fish are now in season, excepting trout; but being withdrawn to the deepest places, and the weather being generally intensely cold, the water, for the most part, frozen over, the angler in general lies by for better days. Keen sportsmen, however, will be on the watch at all times, and grayling, now reckoned excellent, are sometimes taken in the middle of a bright day, with a grub, or even with a small fly, two descriptions of which, Cotton says, may be taken, or imitated, the redbrown, and bright-dun.

MIGRATION OF BIRDS.

"The Stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed times; and the Crane, and the Turtle, and the Swallow observe the time of their coming."-JEREMIAH viii. 7.

No living creatures which enliven our landscape by their presence, excite a stronger sympathy in the lovers of nature, than migratory birds. The full charm of change and variety is theirs. They make themselves felt by their occasional absence; and beside this, they interest the imagination by that peculiar instinct which is to them chart and compass, directing their flight over continents and oceans to that one small spot in the great world where Nature has prepared for their reception; which is pilot and captain, warning them away, calling them back, and conducting them in safety on their passage; that degree of mystery, which yet hangs over their motions, notwithstanding the anxious perseverance with which naturalists have investigated the subject; and all the lively and beautiful associations of their cries, and forms, and habits, and resorts. When we think, for a moment, that the swallows, martins and swifts, which sport in our summer skies, and become cohabitants of our houses, will pre

sently be dwelling in the heart of regions which we long, in vain, to know, and whither our travellers toil, in vain, to penetrate, that they will anon affix their nests to the Chinese pagoda, the Indian temple, or, beneath the equator, to the palm-thatched eaves of the African hut; that the small birds which populate our summer hedges and fields will quickly spread themselves with the cuckoo, and its avant courier, the wryneck, over the warm regions beyond the pillars of Hercules, and the wilds of the Levant, of Greece and Syria; the nightingale will be serenading in the chestnut groves of Italy, and the rose-gardens of Persia; that the thrush and the fieldfare, which share our winter, will pour out triumphant music in their native wastes, in the sudden summers of Scandinavia; that even some of the wild fowls which frequent our winter streams will return with the spring, to the far tracts of North America; and when we call to our imagination the desolate rocks in the lonely ocean, the craggy and misty isles of the Orkneys and Shetlands, where others congregate in myriads; or the wild-swan, which sometimes pays a visit to our largest and most secluded waters, rewinging its way through the lofty regions of the air to Ice