Lady-day (old style) forms with Michaelmas the two eras, as it were, of the year. The first marks the departure of the winter birds and the coming of the spring visitors; the second, in reverse order, marks the departure of the summer birds and the appearance of the vanguard of the winter ones. In the ten days or fortnight succeeding Lady-day (old style)--say from the 6th of April to the 20th--great changes take place in the fauna and flora; or, rather, those changes which have long been slowly maturing become visible. The nightingales arrive and sing, and with them the white butterfly appears. The swallow comes, and the wind-anemone blooms in the copse. Finally the cuckoo cries, and at the same time the pale lilac cuckoo-flower shows in the moist places of the mead. The exact dates, of course, vary with the character of the season and the locality; but, speaking generally, you should begin to keep a keen lookout for these signs of spring about old Lady-day. In the spring of last year, in a warm district, the nightingale sang on the 12th of April, a swallow appeared on the 13th, and the note of the cuckoo was heard on the 15th. No great reliance should be put upon precise dates, because in the first place they vary annually, and in the next an observer can, in astronomical language, only sweep a limited area, and that but imperfectly; so that it is very likely some ploughboy who thinks nothing of it--except to immediately imitate it--hears the cuckoo forty-eight hours before those who have been listening most carefully. So that these dates are not given because they are of any intrinsic value, but simply for illustration. On the 14th of April (the same spring) the fieldfares and redwings were passing over swiftly in small parties--or, rather, in a long flock scattered by the march--towards the North Sea and their summer home in Norway. The winter birds, and the distinctly spring and summer birds, as it were, crossed each other and were visible together, their times of arrival and departure overlapping. As the sap rises in plants and trees, so a new life seems to flow through the veins of bird and animal. The flood-tide of life rises to its height, and after remaining there some time, gradually ebbs. Early in August the leaves of the limes begin to fade, and a few shortly afterwards fall: the silver birch had spots of a pale lemon among its foliage this year on August 13. The brake fern, soon after it has attained its full growth, begins to turn yellow in places. There is a silence in the hedges and copses, and an apparent absence of birds. But about Michaelmas (between the new and old styles) there is a marked change. It is not that anything particular happens upon any precise day, but it is a date around which, just before and after, events seem to group themselves.