knolls and tufted bushes, its old pollards wreathed with ivy, and
its bright and babbling waters, is very dear to me. But I must
always have loved these meadows, so fresh, and cool, and delicious
to the eye and to the tread, full of cowslips, and of all vernal
flowers: Shakspeare's 'Song of Spring' bursts irrepressibly from
our lips as we step on them.

*Walking along these meadows one bright sunny afternoon, a year or
two back, and rather later in the season, I had an opportunity of
noticing a curious circumstance in natural history. Standing close
to the edge of the stream, I remarked a singular appearance on a
large tuft of flags. It looked like bunches of flowers, the leaves
of which seemed dark, yet transparent, intermingled with brilliant
tubes of bright blue or shining green. On examining this phenomenon
more closely, it turned out to be several clusters of dragon-flies,
just emerged from their deformed chrysalis state, and still torpid
and motionless from the wetness of their filmy wings. Half an hour
later we returned to the spot and they were gone. We had seen them
at the very moment when beauty was complete and animation dormant.
I have since found nearly a similar account of this curious process
in Mr. Bingley's very entertaining work, called 'Animal Biography.'

'When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree--'

'Cuckoo! cuckoo!' cried Lizzy, breaking in with her clear childish
voice; and immediately, as if at her call, the real bird, from a