ary cheered the eye with its rods of purple flowers without leaves, and regaled the smell, now displays its scarlet berries through its bright green leaves.

Young frogs leave their ponds, and resort to the tall grass for shelter; swallows and martins congregate previously to their departure; young partridges are found among the com; and poultry moult. The hoary beetle (scarabæus solstitialis) makes its appear. ance; bees begin to expel and kill drones; and the flying ants quit their nests.

The busy bee' still pursues his ceaseless task of collecting his varied sweets to form the honey for his destroyer man, who, in a month or two, will close the labours of this industrious insect by the suffocating fumes of brimstone. For poetical illustrations, see our last volume, pp. 216, 303.

Grouse-shooting usually commences towards the latter end of this month. The angler is busily engaged in his favourite pursuit. On trout fishing we give the following pretty descriptive lines from Mickle's Syr Martyn, a modern poem' disguised witb antique semblance?

-When atop the hoary western hill,
The ruddie Sun appears to rest his chin,
When not a breeze disturbs the murnuring rill,

And mildlie warm the falling dewes begin,

The gamesome Trout then shows her silverie skin,
As wantonly beneath the wave she glides,

Watching the buzzing flies, that never blin,
Then, dropt with pearle and golde, displays her sides,
While she with frequent leape the ruffled streame divides.
On the

green bank a truant schoolboy stands;
Well has this urchin markt her mery play,
And ashen rod obeys his guileful bands,

And leads the mimick dy across her way;

Askaunce, with listly look and coy delay,
The hungrie Trout the glitteraund treachor eyes,

Semblant of life, with speckled wings so gay;
Then, slyly nibbling, prudish from it flies,
Till with a bouncing start she bites the truthless prize.
Ah, then the younker gives the fatefull twitch;

Struck with amaze she feels the hook ypright
Deepe in her gills, and, plonging wbere the beech

Shaddows the poole, she runs in dread affright;

In vain the deepest rocke her late delight,
In vain the sedgy nook for help she tries ;

The laughing elfe now curbs, now aids her flight,
The more eutangled still the more she flies,
And soon amid the grass the panting captive lies.
Where now, ah pity! where the sprightly play,

That wanton bounding, and exulting joy,
That lately welcomed the retourning ray,

When by the riv'let's banks, with blushes coy,

April walked forth-ah! never more to toy,

In purling streams, she pants, she gasps and dies ! Another author has thus elegantly described the making of the 'mimic fly.'

To frame the little animal,- provide
All the gay bues that wait on female pride :
Let nature guide thee: sometimes golden wire
The shining bellies of the fly require;
The peacock's plumes thy tackle must not fail,
Nor the dear purchase of the sable's tail;
Each gaudy bird some slender tribute brings,
And lends the growing insect proper wings:
Silks of all colours must their aid impart,
And every fur promote the fisher's art.
So the gay lady with expensive care
Borrows the pride of land, of sea, of air,
Furs, pearls, plumes, the glittering thing displays,

Dazzles our eyes, and easy hearts betrays. The maritime plants which flower in July, are the club rush (scirpus maritimus), bearded cat's tail grass (phleum erinitum), bulbous fox tail grass (alopecurus bulbosus), the reflexed and creeping meadow grass (poa distans & maritima), the field eryngo (eryngium campestre), parsley water dropwort (oenanthe pimpinelloides), smooth sea-heath (frankenia lævis), and the golden dock (rumex maritimus); all of which are to be found in salt marshes.

On sandy shores may be seen the sea mat-weed (arundo arenaria), upright sea-lime grass (etymus arenarius), the sea lungwort (pulmonaria maritima), the sea bind-weed (convolvulus soldanella), saltwort (salsola), sea-holly (eryngium maritimum): prickly

samphire (echinophora spinosa), and the sea-lavender (statice limonium), are found on maritime rocks; and the sea pea (pisum maritimum) on rocky shores.

About the middle or latter end of July, pilchards (clupea pilchardus) appear in vast shoals, off the Cornish coast; and prawns and lobsters are taken in this month.

The storms of wind and rain in this month are frequently accompanied by thunder and lightning'. The circumstances of a storm in summer are very grand and awful. The day is commonly very sultry, the thermometer perhaps at 86, the sky exhibits a sort of copper glow, and a solemn silence prevails. The lightning begins to dart its forked fires in a zig-zag direction, or the clouds opening disclose it in tremendous sheets; the thunder roars at intervals, or keeps up a continued rumbling. The clouds now may assume a deep and gloomy blue, intermixed with others of grey; a few large heat drops fall at first, and are succeeded by a heavy shower falling in dark oblique lines. A fire-ball, perhaps, descends, and sets some stack or barn into a blaze of fire, or trees are riven asunder by the forked lightning?. The terrors of a storm are heightened by the wildness and ruggedness of the surrounding scenery.

High on the east the great Ben Lomond rears
His lofty head, and hides it in the clouds!
These, oft attracted by his tow'ring height,
Stop short their airy flight, and form a veil
Which dark and thick descends. 'Condensing still,
Part slowly sails along, and, swelling, shrouds
The neighb'ring hills the glens how dark between!
The winds are hushed—the birds expectant pause!
The ox with wistful gaze eyes the deep gloom!
Nor voice of man is heard, nor pipe nor horn,
But silent expectation reigns and boding fear!

· For sume useful hints to guard against the danger of these phenomena, consult T.T. for 1817, p. 217.

2 See our last volume, p. 185, for a beautiful little poem on this subject by Mrs. Carter.

Sudden athwart the gloom the lightning's glance,
As quick reflected by the placid lake,
With lucid air darts bright! Anon sublime
In awful majesty the thunder rolls;
Onward it rolls, and louder roars,
In bursting peals successive heard afar,
Re-echoed oft by rocks and caverns deep
From all the neighb’ring bills--till circling round,
Still gaining force, again it bursts a peal
That stuns the ear. Rocks dashed on rocks are heard
Rattling around. The stoutest heart, appalled
With wild dismay, scarce dares to eye the gloom :
Deep seamed with frequent streaks of moving fire,
Darting in rapid gleams from cloud to cloud !
The clouds are seen in wildest tumults mixed :
And now—a mighty flash with fearful glare
Wide opens half the sky! The heavy rain,
Pouring in streams, resistless rushes down,
Ploughs the red mould, and bears it to the main!
Nature convulsed, the everlasting hills
Appear to totter, and the total wreck
of all terrestrial objects seems at hand!

DR. CRIRIE..

OBSERVATIONS on the MICROSCOPE.

(Concluded from p. 160.] If decayed cheese be examined by the microscope, it will be seen to swarm with a multitude of small transparent animals, of an oval figure, terminating in a point, something in the form of a snout. These insects are furnished with eight scaly articulated legs, by means of which they move themselves very heavily along. Their head is terminated by an obtuse body, in the form of a truncated cone, where the organ through which they feed is apparently situated. The greater part of their bodies is covered with several long sharp-pointed hairs. It is found that there are another kind of mites that have only six legs: they are all extremely tenacious of life; for, Leeuwenhoek says, that some of them which he had attached to a pin before his microscope, lived in that state several weeks.

Nothing can be more curious than the appearance exhibited by mouldiness, when viewed through a microscope. If looked at by the naked eye, it seems nothing but an irregular tissue of filaments; but the magnifying glass shows it to be a forest of small plants, which derive their nourishment from the moist substance which serves them as a base. The stems of these plants may be plainly distinguished; and sometimes their buds, some shut and some open. They have much similarity to mushrooms, the tops of which, when they come to maturity, emit an exceedingly fine dust, which is their seed. Mushrooms, it is well known, are the growth of a single night, but those in miniature, of which we are speaking, seem to come to perfection in a much less space of time than hat; hence we account for the extraordinary progress which mouldiness makes in a few hours. Another curious observation of the same kind is, that M. Ahlefeld, seeing some stones covered with a sort of dust, had the curiosity to examine it with a microscope, and he found that it consisted of small microscopic mushrooms, raised on pedicles, the heads of which, round the middle, were turned up at the edges. They were striated also from the centre to the circumference, as certain kinds of mushrooms are. He further remarked, that they contained, above their upper covering, a multitude of small grains, shaped like cherries, somewhat flattened, which he suspected were the seeds; and finally he observed, among this forest of mushrooms, several small red insects, which probably fed upon them.

The lycoperdon, or puff-ball, is a plant of the fungus kind, which grows in the form of a tubercle, covered with small grains, very like shagreen. If pressed, it bursts, and emits an exceedingly fine kind of dust, which flies off under the appearance of smoke. If some of the dust be examined with the microscope, it appears to consist of perfectly round globules, of an orange colour, the diameter of which is only about