How find the myriads that in summer cheer The hills and valleys with their ceaseless songs, Due sustenance, or where subsist they now? Earth yields them naught; the imprisoned worm is safe Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs Lie covered close; and berry-bearing thorns That feed the thrush, (whatever some suppose,) Afford the smaller minstrels no supply. The long protracted rigor of the year Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and holes Ten thousand seek an unmolested end, As instinct prompts; self-buried there they die. And Burns, with true poetic sympathy for the sufferings of all created things, while listening to the stormy terrors of a winter’s night, thus apostrophizes the feathered songsters of the grove:— Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing, That in the merry months o’ spring Delighted me to hear thee sing— What comes o’ thee? Whare wilt thou cow’r thy chittering wing, An’ close thy e’e? Yet amid all these indications of the severity of the season, there are pleasing circumstances which sometimes occur. In the prairies of our western world, the song of the prairie-thrush is heard occasionally ushering in the new year. This is the most early songster in that part of the world, which, sitting on the top of some high bending shrub, in showery weather, as he rides to and fro with the breezes, exerts his throat in loud, uninterrupted strains, which has gained for him the appellation of the storm-bird. In this month the small wren of the prairie sings melodiously as it hops from reed to reed in search of food. If we examine the plants at this season of the year, we perceive the hand of the Creator, in his wise protection of what he intends for the happiness of his children. Those plants called herbaceous, which die down to the root every autumn, are safely concealed under ground, preparing their new shoots to burst forth when the earth is softened by spring. Shrubs and trees, which are exposed to the open air, he has closely wrapped in a covering sufficient to protect them from the most severe weather. The buds are protected in their hard-coated calyx to secure their forthcoming beauty from decay; if one of those buds be carefully opened, it is found to consist of young leaves rolled together, within which are even all the blossoms in miniature, which are afterward intended to delight our eyes, or probably to refresh by their fragrance our senses. As that great and celebrated naturalist, Cuvier, would often say to his pupils, “Show me a botanist who is a skeptic, and I will show you an idiot. An infidel naturalist is a _rara avis_ I have never yet met with.”