pressive. The insect that produces this note is a grotesque-looking creature, resembling about equally a grasshopper and a humblebee.

The black crickets and their familiar chirping are well known to everybody. An insect of this family is celebrated in English poetry as the "cricket on the hearth.” Those of the American species are seldom found in our dwelling-houses; but they are all around our door-steps and by the wayside, under every dry fence and in every sandy hill. They chirp all day and some part of the night, and more or less in all kinds of weather. They begin their songs before the grasshoppers are heard, and continue them to a later period in the autumn, not ceasing until the hard frosts have driven them into their retreats and lulled them into a torpid sleep.

The note of the katydid, which is a mere drumming sound, is not musical. In American literature no insect has become so widely celebrated, on account of a fancied resemblance to the word "katydid." To my ear a chorus of these minute drummers, all uttering in concert their peculiar notes, seems more like the hammering of a thousand little smiths in some busy hamlet of insects. There is no melody in these sounds, and they are accordingly less suggestive than those of the green nocturnal grasshopper, that is heard at the same hour in similar situations.

The nocturnal grasshoppers, called August pipers, or Cicadas, begin their chirping about the middle of July, but are not in full song until August. These are the true nightingales of insects, and the species that seems to me the most worthy of being consecrated to poetry. There is a singular plaintiveness in their low monotonous notes, which are the charm of our late summer evenings. There are but few persons who are not affected by these sounds with a sensation of subdued but cheerful melan

choly. This effect does not seem to be caused by association so much as by their peculiar cadence.

The notes of these nocturnal pipers on very warm evenings are in unison and accurately timed, as if they were singing in concert. It is worthy of notice that they always vary their keynote according to the temperature of the atmosphere. They are evidently dependent on a summer heat for their vivacity, and become sluggish and torpid as the thermometer sinks below a certain point. When the temperature is high they keep good time, singing shrilly and rapidly. As it sinks they take a lower key and do not keep time together. When the thermometer is not above sixty, their notes are very low, and there are but few performers.

55°

50°

66

66

66

C, imperfect time and tune.

B flat,

66

66

66

66

66

A, keynote hardly to be detected, many out of time and tune.

G, a few individuals only, singing slowly and feebly.

JANUARY.

POETS in all ages have sung of the delights of seedtime and harvest, and of the voluptuous pleasures of summer; but when treating of winter, they have confined their descriptions to the sports of the season rather than to the beauties of Nature. Winter is supposed to furnish but few enjoyments to be compared with those of summer; because the majority of men, being .oppressed by too many burdens, naturally yearn for a life of indolence. I will not deny that the pleasures derived from the direct influence of Nature are greatly diminished in cold weather; there are not so many interesting objects to amuse the mind, as in the season when all animated things are awake, and the earth is covered with vegetation; but there are many pleasant rural excursions and invigorating exercises which can be enjoyed only in the winter season, and for which thousands of our undegenerate yeomanry would welcome its annual visit.

The pleasures of a winter's walk are chiefly such as are derived from prospect. A landscape-painter could be but partially acquainted with the sublimity of terrestrial scenery, if he had never looked upon the earth when it was covered with snow. In summer the prospect unfolds such an infinite array of beautiful things to our sight, that the sublimity of the scene is hidden beneath a spectacle of dazzling and flowery splendor. We are then more powerfully attracted by objects of beauty that charm. the senses than by those grander aspects of Nature that awaken the emotion of sublimity. In winter, the earth

is divested of all those accompaniments of scenery which are not in unison with grandeur. At this period, therefore, the mind is affected with nobler thoughts; it is less bewildered by a multitude of fascinating objects, and is more free to indulge itself in a serious train of meditations.

The exhilaration of mind attending a winter walk in the fields and woods, when the earth is covered with. snow, surpasses any emotion of the kind which is produced by the appearance of Nature at other seasons. We often hear in conversation of the invigorating effects of cold weather; yet those few only who are engaged in rural occupations, and who spend the greater part of the day in the open air, can fully realize the amount of physical enjoyment that springs from it. I can appreciate the languid recreations of a warm summer's day. When one is at leisure in the country he cannot fail to enjoy it, if he can take shelter under the canopy of trees or in the deeper shade of the forest. But these languid enjoyments would soon become oppressive and monotonous; and the constant participation of them must cause one gradually to degenerate into a mere animal. The human mind is. constituted to feel positive pleasure only in action. Sleep and rest are mere negative conditions, to which we submit with a grateful sense of their power to fit us for the renewed exercise of the mind and the body.

In our latitude, at the present era January is usually the month of the greatest cold; and in severe weather there is a general stillness that is favorable to musing. The little streamlets are frozen and silent, and there is hardly any motion except of the winds, and of the trees that bend to their force. But the works of Nature are still carried on beneath the frost and snow. Though the flowers are buried in their hyemal sleep, thousands of unseen elements are present, all waiting to prepare their

hues and fragrance, when the spring returns and wakes. the flowers and calls the bees out from their hives. Nature is always active in her operations; and during winter are the embryos nursed of myriad hosts, that will soon spread beauty over the plains and give animation to the field and forest.

Since the beauties of summer and autumn have faded, Nature has bestowed on earth and man a brilliant recompense, and spread the prospect with new scenes of beauty and sublimity. The frozen branches of the trees are clattering in the wind, and the reed stands nodding above the ice and shivers in the rustling breeze. But while these things remind us of the chills of winter, the universal prospect of snow sends into the soul the light of its own perfect purity and splendor, and makes the landscape still beautiful in its desolation. Though we look in vain. for a green herb, save where the ferns and mosses conceal themselves in little dingles among the rocks, yet the general face of the earth is unsurpassed in brilliancy. Morning, noon, and night exhibit glories unknown to any other season; and the moon is more lovely when she looks down from her starry throne and over field, lake, mountain, and valley, emblems the tranquillity of heaven.

It is pleasant to watch the progress and movements of a snow-storm while the flakes are thickly falling from the skies, and the drifts are rapidly accumulating along the sides of the fences and in the lanes and hollows. The peculiar motion of the winds, while eddying and whirling over the varied surface of the ground, is rendered more apparent than by any other phenomenon. Every curve and every irregular twisting of the wind is made palpable, to a degree that is never witnessed in the whirling leaves of autumn, in the sand of the desert, or in the dashing spray of the ocean. The appearance is