The season immediately following the harvest when the wheat, the millet, and the corn have been garnered up in the storehouses, and the winter's fodder for the cattle has been stacked in the fields, is especially a time of merry-making. An unusual joy also attends the labors of securing the crops. For the mowers sing their national airs in the meadows, and keep time with the sweep of their scythes. Sometimes at the commencement of the hay-harvest they may be seen going into the fields in parties of fifties; and any company of travellers happening then to be passing by will be good-naturedly attacked with both scythes and shouts, pulled from their horses, and carried off in triumph. For their ransom they will have to give at least a sheep to help out the evening's supper, besides honey enough to make mead for the whole company. And with such a prospect of feasting before them the laborers will return with increased zest to their work, swinging gaily their short scythes worn well-nigh to the backbone, roaming in parties hither and thither through the field, and attacking, amid songs and shoutings, the thickest masses of grass as if so many Russian _corps d'armée_. A pleasing rural sight indeed it is, the green valley glowing in the warm sunlight, and its grass coarse, but savory to the cattle, lying in heavy swaths, or piled in stacks. Mixed with this are the juicy chicory-stalks eight or ten feet in height, and tipped with light blue flowers. The sweet clover also, of both the white and red varieties, is scattered more or less among the taller grasses; so that the meadow is as fragrant as a bank of wild flowers, or a parterre in a garden. With rejoicings somewhat similar is the return of seed-time celebrated, except it is then the time for hopes instead of thanksgivings. And the joy felt at this season when, the time of the singing of birds having come and the voice of the turtle being heard in the land, the grain is committed in faith of increase to the earth, is the greater in consequence of a period of partial abstinence and renunciation of social pleasures, analogous to the Christian lent, having preceded it. For during the month of March the Circassian puts himself on a low diet, refraining especially from the eating of eggs, and will neither hire, lend, borrow, or receive any thing from another, not even a light from a neighbor's house. So general seems to be the prompting of nature in favor of a period of fasting at the commencement of the spring. But the March moon once set there is immediately held a feast, at which what few of the eggs laid by in the course of the month preceding have not already in the course of the day been devoured, are fired at as a mark, and when the skins of the victims slain at the festival become the reward of the conquerors.