the beneficence and wisdom of Providence are manifested: without the agency of evaporation, not dwelling on the infinitude of effects and results, no vegetation could exist, no animal life continue. The ivy[22] (hedera helix), the dark-looking ivy, almost covers with its thick foliage the pollards in our hedge-rows; and, creeping up the sides of the old barn, and chimney of the cottage, nearly hides them from our sight; affording a sheltered roosting-place to many poor birds, and is almost their only refuge in the cold season of the year. But the ivy can boast of much more extensive service to the poor wayfaring beings of creation, than the merely affording them a covering from the winds of winter. Those two extreme quarters of our year, autumn and spring, yield to most animals but a very slender and precarious supply of food; but the ivy in those periods saves many from want and death; and the peculiar situations, in which it prefers to flourish, are essential to the preservation of this supply, as in less sheltered ones it would be destroyed. In the month of October the ivy blooms in profusion, and spreading over the warm side of some neglected wall, or the sunny bark of the broad ash on the bank, its flowers become a universal banquet to the insect race. The great black fly (musca grossa), and its numerous tribe, with multitudes of small winged creatures, resort to them; and there we see those beautiful animals, the latest birth of the year, the admiral (vanessa atalanta) and peacock (vanessa Io) butterflies, hanging with expanded wings like open flowers themselves, enjoying the sunny gleam, and feeding on the sweet liquor that distils from the nectary of this plant. As this honey is produced in succession by the early or later expansion of the bud, it yields a constant supply of food, till the frosts of November destroy the insects, or drive them to their winter retreats. Spring arrives; and in the bitter months of March, April, and even May, at times, when the wild products of the field are nearly consumed, the ivy ripens its berries, and then almost entirely constitutes the food of the missel-thrush, wood-pigeon, and some other birds; and now these shy and wary birds, that commonly avoid the haunts of man, constrained by hunger, will approach our dwellings, to feed upon the ripe berries of the ivy. Now too the blackbird and the thrush resort to its cover, to conceal their nests. These early-building birds find little foliage at this period sufficient to hide their habitations; and did not the ivy lend its aid to preserve them, and no great number are preserved, perhaps few nests would be hidden from the young eyes that seek them. The early expansion of the catkins of the sallow (salix caprea), and others of the willow tribe, whence the bee extracts its first food, and the late blooming of this ivy, are indispensable provisions for the existence of many of the insect race; the “young