These saints were brothers, who founded the monastery of Condate with a nunnery, in the forest of Jura. St. Lupicinus prescribed a hard regimen. He lived himself on bread moistened with cold water, used a chair or a hard board for a bed, wore no stockings in his monastery, walked in wooden shoes, and died about 480. * * * * * FLORAL DIRECTORY. Purple Crocus. _Crocus vernus._ Dedicated to _St. Proterius_. _Five Sundays in February._ The February of 1824, being leap-year, consisted of twenty-nine days; it contained five Sundays, a circumstance which cannot again occur till another leap-year, wherein the first of February shall fall on Sunday. FOR THE MEMORY _Old Memorandum of the Months._ Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November, All the rest have thirty and one, Except February, which hath twenty-eight alone. [Illustration: MARCH.] --Sturdy March with brows full sternly bent And armed strongly, rode upon a ram, The same which over Hellespontus swam; Yet in his hand a spade he also hent, And in a bag all sorts of weeds ysame, Which on the earth he strewed as he went, And fill’d her womb with fruitfull hope of nourishment. _Spenser._ March is the _third_ month of the year; with the ancients it was the first: according to Mr. Leigh Hunt, from Ovid, the Romans named it from Mars, the god of war, because he was the father of their first prince. “As to the deity’s nature, March has certainly nothing in common with it; for though it affects to be very rough, it is one of the best natured months in the year, drying up the superabundant moisture of winter with its fierce winds, and thus restoring us our paths through the fields, and piping before the flowers like a bacchanal. He sometimes, it must be confessed, as if in a fit of the spleen, hinders the buds which he has dried from blowing; and it is allowable in the less robust part of his friends out of doors, to object to the fancy he has for coming in such a cutting manner from the east. But it may be truly said, that the oftener you meet him firmly, the less he will shake you; and the more smiles you will have from the fair months that follow him.” Perhaps the ascription of this month to Mars, by the Romans, was a compliment to themselves; they were the sons of War, and might naturally deduce their origin from the belligerent deity. Minerva was also patroness of March.