not a harsh sentence to refuse this title to the mass of mere opinions and conjectures, which, for some hundred years before the 19th century, were pompously designated "Theories of the earth." With much better right may the title of geologists be conceded to Strabo and the old philosophers, who studied the local phenomena of their countries, and proposed limited hypotheses, in agree. ment with their notion of the laws of nature, than to Burnet and Buffon, whose systems of cosmogony have the air of a philosophical romance rather than of a serious generalisa

tion of facts.

The history of the progress of opinions in geology may be useful as a warning to men advanced in geological inquiries, not to reason upon assumptions when "facts" remain to be explored; and to repress that impatience of spirit, which ever seeks to anticipate observation by the efforts of invention. But the student should, if possible, be kept in impartial ignorance of these conflicting hypotheses, which are too apt to fascinate the young and imaginative mind.

It gives us pleasure to diffuse these sentiments widely, as it is too much the fashion to take matters of science upon trust. Investi gation can alone prove satisfactory.

APPEARANCES DECEITFUL.

A merry sunbeam, warm and gay,
Lighting in an April day,

O'er a meadow chanced to stray;

And a little foolish primrose thought
That sunbeam had the summer brought.

And in its dawning birth-day flush,
It rose aside a holly bush,
The orchestra of many a thrush:

Its silver arms flung round in air,
The merry sunbeam found it there.

The wily day gleamed, smiled, and laugh'd,
As to the floweret's health it quaff'd,
And drain'd of dew full many a draught;

Nor would that foolish flower believe
Such smiles and beauty could deceive.

But as the day began to wane,
The primrose wish'd, but wish'd in vain,
Its morning freshness back again;

Yet still the sunbeam brightly shone,
And smil'd, and laugh'd, and flatter'd on.

But as the air of evening came,
And withering chill'd the floweret's frame,
The sunbeam scarlet blush'd for shame,

And proving all its words a boast,
Withdrew its warmth when needed most.

The little primrose, sore dismay'd,
In winding-sheet of grass array'd,
Aside the holly dying, laid-

Shivering, bereft, and bare,
The merry sunbeam left it there!

J. B.

A BANK OF VIOLETS.

AT THIS SWEET SEASON, few lovers of nature need prompting to go abroad and seek for the early flower. Let us hear what Miss MITFORD says about it; for we would fain, now, give place to other voices than our own, and so be "ever changing ever new. In her note-book, she thus writes:-March 27th-It is a dull grey morning, with a dewy feeling in the air; fresh, but not windy; cool, but not cold; the very day for a person newly arrived from the heat, the glare, the noise, and the fever of London, to plunge into the remotest labyrinths of the country, and regain the repose of mind, the calmness of heart, which has been lost in that great battle. I must go violeting-it is a necessity and I must go alone. . .

The common that I am now passing-the Lea, as it is called-is one of the loveliest spots near my house. It is a little sheltered scene, retiring, as it were, from the village; sunk amidst higher lands-hills would be almost too grand a word-edged on one side by our gay high-road, and intersected by another; and surrounded by a most picturesque confusion of meadows, cottages, farms, and orchards; and with a great pond in one corner, unusually bright and clear, giving a delightful cheerfulness and day-light to the picture. The swallows haunt that pond; so do the children. There is a merry group round it now; I have seldom seen it without one. Children love water, clear, bright, sparkling water; it excites and feeds their curiosity; it is motion and life.

A turn in the lane, and we come to the old house standing amongst the high elms, the old farm-house, which always, I don't know why, carries back my imagination to Shakespeare's days. It is a long, low, irregular building, with one room at an angle from the house, covered with ivy, fine, whiteveined ivy; the first floor of the main building projecting, and supported by oaken. beams, and one of the windows below with its old casement and long narrow frames, forming the half of a shallow hexagon. porch, with seats in it, surrounded by a pinnacle, pointed roofs and clustered chimneys, complete the picture. The very walls are crumbling to decay under a careless landlord and a ruined tenant.

A

Now a few yards farther and I reach the bank. Ah! I smell them already; most exquisite perfume steams and lingers in this moist heavy air. Through this little gate, and along the green south bank of this green wheat-field, and they burst upon me,-the lovely violets! in tenfold loveliness. The ground is covered with them, white and purple, enamelling the short dewy grass, looking but the more vividly colored under

the dull, leaden sky. There they lie by hundreds, by thousands. In former years I have been used to watch them from the tiny green bud, till one or two stole into bloom. They never came on me before in such a sudden and luxuriant glory of simple beauty, --and I do really owe one pure and genuine pleasure to feverish London. How beautifully they are placed too, on this sloping bank-with the palm branches waving above them, full of early bees, and mixing their honeyed scent with the more delicate violet odor. How transparent and smooth and lusty are the bunches, full of sap and life. And there, just by the old mossy root, is a superb tuft of primroses, with a yellow butterfly hovering over them, like a flower floating on the air. What happiness to sit in this tufty knoll and fill my basket with the blossoms! What a renewal of heart and mind! To inhabit such a scene of peace and sweetness, is again to be fearless, gay, and gentle as a child. Then it is, that thought becomes poetry; and feeling, religion. Then it is that we are happy, and good.

ing in blissful and innocent sensation, Oh that my whole life could pass so floatenjoying in peace and gratitude the common blessings of nature-thankful above all for the simple habits, the healthful temperament, which render them so dear. Alas! who may dare expect a life of such happiness? But I can at least snatch and prolong the fleeting pleasure-can fill my basket with flowers, and my heart with pure thoughtscan gladden my little home with their sweetness-can divide my treasures with one, a dear one, who cannot seek them -can see them when I shut my eyes, and dream of them when I fall asleep.

pure

We love to hear Miss Mitford speak so of the "heat, glare, noise, and fever of London," describing them as the elements of "a great battle.' We feel the truth of every word she utters; and can share all the delights she so vividly pictures in this, her morning ramble. Again we repeat,— "God made the Country!"

SPRING FLOWERS.

THE DAISY.

THE FOLLOWING REMARKS BY ROUSSEAU, on this beautiful little herald of Spring, will be read with interest.

Take one of those little flowers which cover all the pastures, and which_everybody knows by the name of daisy. Look at it well; for I am sure you would not have guessed by its appearance that this flower, which is so small and delicate, is really composed of between two and three hundred flowers, all of them perfect; that is, having each its corolla, stamens, pistil, and fruit.

Every one of those leaves which are white above and red underneath, and form a kind of crown round the flower, appearing to be nothing more than little petals, are in reality so many true flowers; and every one of those tiny yellow things also, which you see in the centre, and which at first you have, perhaps, taken for nothing but stamens, are real flowers.

If you were accustomed to botanical dissections, and were armed with a good glass and plenty of patience, it would be easy to convince you of this. But you may at least pull out one of the white leaves from the Hower; you will at first think that it is flat from one end to the other; but look carefully at the end by which it was fastened to the flowers, and you will see that this end is not flat, but round and hollow, in form of a tube, and that a little thread, ending in two horns, issues from the tube; this thread is the forked style of the flower, which, as you now see, is flat only at the top.

Next look at those yellow things in the flower be sufficiently advanced, you will middle of the flower, and which as I have told you are all so many flowers; if the see several of them open in the middle, and monopetalous corollas, which expand; and cut into several parts. These are a glass will easily discover in them the pistil, and even the anthers with which it is surrounded. Commonly the yellow florets towards the centre are still rounded and

even

closed. These, however, are flowers like the others, but not yet open; for they expand successively from the edge inwards. This is enough to show you by the eye, the possibility that all these small affairs, both white and yellow, may be so many distinct flowers; and this is a constant fact. You perceive, nevertheless, that all these little flowers are pressed, and enclosed in a calyx which is common to them all, and which is that of the daisy. In considering then the whole daisy as one flower, we give it a very significant name when we call it a composite-flower."

But we have not yet done with the daisy. Henry Sutton, a young poet, has sung its praises so very sweetly, that we gladly open our columns to let his song be heard throughout the land .—

THE DAISY.

A gold and silver cup

Upon a pillar green, Earth holds her Daisy up

To catch the sunshine in :A dial chaste, set there

To show each radiant hour:

A field-astronomer;

A sun-observing flower.

The children with delight
To meet the Daisy run;

They love to see how bright
She shines upon the sun:
Like lowly white-crowned queen,
Demurely doth she bend,
And stands, with quiet mien,
The little children's friend.
Out in the field she's seen,
A simple rustic maid,
In comely gown of green

And clean white frill arrayed;
There stands, like one in mood
Of hope by fancy spun,
Awaiting to be woo'd,
Awaiting to be won.
The dandy Butterfly,

All exquisitely drest,
Before the Daisy's eye
Displays his velvet vest:
In vain is he arraved

In all that gaudy show; What business hath a maid With such a foppish beau?

The vagrant Bee but sings

For what he gets thereby;
Nor comes, except he brings
His pocket on his thigh;
Then let him start aside

And woo some wealthier flower;
The Daisy's not his bride,
She hath no honey-dower.

The Gnat, old back-bent fellow,
In frugal frieze coat drest,
Seeks on her carpet yellow
His tottering limbs to rest:
He woos her with eyes dim,

Voice thin, and aspect sage;
What careth she for him?
What part hath youth with age?

She lifteth up her cup,
She gazeth on the sky;
Content, so looking up,

Whether to live or die.
Content, in wind and cold

To stand, in shine and shower;
A white-rayed marigold,
A golden-bosomed flower.

It is a pleasant croft

Where "winged kine" may graze; A golden meadow soft,

Quadrille-ground for young fays; A little yellow plot,

With clean white pales fenced round, Each tipt with vermeil spot,

Each set on greenest ground.

CHOICE OF COMPANY.

"Be very circumspect," says good old Quarles, "in the choice of thy company. In the society of thine equals, thou shalt enjoy more of pleasure; in the society of thy superiors, thou shalt find more profit. The best means to grow better, is, to feel yourself the worst of the company. Always listen; but talk seldom."

THE ENGLISH IN ITALY.

THE English residing or travelling upon the continent would, if gathered together, make a large city. They carry England with them wherever they go. In Rome there is an English church, an English readingroom, an English druggist, an English grocer, and an English tailor. As England is an island, so they everywhere form an insular community, upon which the waves of foreign influence beat in vain. This peculiarity penetrates to the individual. A French or German table-d'hote is a social continent; but an English coffee-room, at the hour of dinner, is an archipelago of islets, with deep straits of reserve and exclusiveness flowing between.

Travellers of other nations learn to conform to the manners and customs of the people about them; avoiding the observation attracted by singularity. Not so the Englishman. He boldly faces the most bristling battery of comment and notice. His shooting jacket, checked trousers, and brown gaiters, proclaim his nationality before he begins to speak; he rarely yields to the seduction of a moustache; he is inflexibly loyal to tea; and will make a hard fight before consenting to dine at an earlier hour than five. The English in Rome, as a general rule, show little sensibility to the peculiar influences of the place. Towards the Catholic Church and its ceremonies they turn a countenance of irreverent curiosity; trying the spirit of the Italians by their careless deportment, their haughty strides, and their inveterate staring-intimating that the forms of Catholic worship are merely dramatic entertainments performed by daylight.

Nor are they much moved by beauty, in nature or art. An Englishman, in his heart of hearts, regards emotion or enthusiasm as feminine weaknessess, unworthy of manhood. A fine dog or horse calls forth from him more energetic admiration than the most beautiful landscape or picture. He marches through a gallery with resolute strides-his countenance expanding as the end draws near. Five minutes despatch a Raphael; four, a Titian or Coreggio; and two or three are enough for less illustrious names.

It need hardly be said that the English in Rome are not popular, either with the Italians in spite of the money they spendor with their fellow sojourners in other lands. They form the subject of innumerable caricatures; and hardly a book of travels appears in any language but their own which is not seasoned with stories-good, if not true-of English phlegm, English rudeness, or English eccentricity. But this unpopularity is not more marked than the lofty disdain with which it is accepted by the parties who are

the subjects of it. Coriolanus himself did not confront ill-will with a haughtier brow. Indeed, as a general rule, an Englishman is never so repulsive as when it is his cue to conciliate opposition, and disarm unreasonable prejudice.-G. H.

THE EMIGRANT'S LARK.

The following little sketch will, we are sure, please our readers. It is a good story; all the better for the way in which it is told. Sir FRANCIS HEAD is the narrator.

Henry Patterson and his wife Elizabeth sailed from the Tower in the year 1834 as emigrants on board a vessel heavily laden with passengers, and bound to Quebec. Patterson was an intimate friend of a noted bird-catcher in London, called Charley Nash. Now, Nash had determined to make his friend a present of a good skylark, to take to Canada with him; but not having what he called "a real good un" among his collection, he went into the country on purpose to trap one. In this effort he succeeded; but when he returned to London, he found that his friend Patterson had embarked; and that the vessel had sailed a few hours before he reached the Tower-stairs. He therefore jumped on board a steamer that was about to start, and overtook the ship just as she reached Gravesend; where he hired a small boat, and then sculling alongside, he was soon recognised by Patterson and his wife, who with a crowd of other male and female emigrants of all ages were taking a last farewell of the various objects which the vessel was slowly passing.

Here's a bird for you, Harry," said Nash to Patterson, as, standing up in the skiff, he took the frightened captive out of his hat; "and if it sings as well in a cage as it did just now in the air, it will be the best you have ever heard."

Patterson, descending a few steps from the gangway, stretched out his hand and received the bird, which he immediately called Charley, in remembrance of his faithful friend Nash.

In the Gulf of St. Lawrence the vessel was wrecked; almost everything was lost except the lives of the crew and passengers; and accordingly, when Patterson, with his wife hanging heavily on his arm, landed in Canada, he was destitute of everything he had owned on board, excepting Charley, whom he had preserved, and afterwards kept for three days in the foot of an old stocking.

After some few sorrows, and after some little time, Patterson settled himself at Toronto, in the lower part of a small house in King Street, the principal thoroughfare of the town, where he worked as a shoemaker. His shop had a southern aspect; he drove a

nail into the outside of his window; and regularly every morning just before he sat upon his stool to commence his daily work, he carefully hung upon this nail a common skylark's cage (which had a solid back of dark wood, with a bow or small wire orchestra in front) upon the bottom of which there was to be seen, whenever it could be procured, a fresh sod of green turf.

As Charley's wings were of no use to him in this prison, the only wholesome exercise he could take was by hopping on and off his little stage. This sometimes he would continue to do most cheerfully for hours, stopping only occasionally to dip his bill into a small,square, tin box of water, suspended on one side, and then to raise it for a second or two towards the sky. As soon, however, as (and only when) his spirit moved him, this feathered captive again hopped upon his stage; and there, standing on a bit of British soil, with his little neck extended, his small head slightly turned, his drooping wings gently fluttering, his bright black eyes intently fixed upon the distant, deep, dark blue Canada sky, he commenced his unpremeditated morning song, his extempore matin prayer.

The effect of his thrilling notes, of his shrill joyous song, of his pure unadulterated English voice, upon the people of Canada, cannot be described; and probably can only be imagined by those who either by adversity have been prematurely weaned from their mother country, or who, from long-continued absence from it, and from hope deferred, have learned in a foreign land to appreciate the inestimable blessings of their fatherland, of their parent home. All sorts of men-riding, driving, walking, propelled by urgent business, or sauntering for appetite or amusement-as if by word of command, stopped, spell-bound, to listen, for more or less time, to the inspired warbling, to the joyful hallelujahs, of a common, homely-dressed, English lark! The loyal listened to him with the veneration with which they would have listened to the voice of their sovereign; reformers, as they leaned towards him, heard nothing in his enchanting melody which even they could desire to improve. I believe that in the hearts of the most obdurate radicals, he reanimated feelings of youthful attachment to their mother-country; and that even the trading Yankee (in whose country birds of the most gorgeous plumage snuffle rather than sing) must have acknowledged that the Heavenborn talent of this little bird unaccountably warmed the Anglo-Saxon blood that flowed in his veins. Nevertheless, whatever others may have felt, I must own, that although I always refrained from joining Charley's motley audience, yet, while he was singing, I never rode by him without acknowledging, as he stood with his outstretched neck looking

to Heaven, that he was (at all events, for his size) the most powerful advocate for social union; and that his eloquence was as strongly appreciated by others, Patterson received many convincing proofs.

Three times, as he sat beneath the cage, proud as Lucifer, yet hammering away at a shoe-sole lying in purgatory on his lapstone, and then, with a waxed thread in each hand, suddenly extending his elbows, like a scaramouch,-three times was he interrupted in his work by people who each separately offered him one hundred dollars for his lark. An old farmer repeatedly offered him a hundred acres of land for him; and a poor Sussex carter, who had imprudently stopped to hear him sing, was so completely overwhelmed with affection and maladie du pays,

that, walking into the shop, he offered for him all he possessed in the world-his horse and cart. But Patterson would sell him to

no one.

On the evening of the th of October, 1837, the shutters of Patterson's shop

windows were half closed, on account of his having that morning been accidentally shot dead on the island opposite the city. The widow's prospects were thus suddenly ruined, her hopes blasted, her goods sold; and I need hardly say that I made myself the owner, the lord and the master, of poor Patterson's lark.

It was my earnest desire, if possible, to better his condition, and I certainly felt very proud to possess him; but somehow or other this "Charley is my darling" sort of feeling evidently was not reciprocal. Whether it was, that in the conservatory of the Government House at Toronto, Charley missed the sky whether it was that he disliked the movement, or rather want of movement, in my elbows or whether, from some mysterious feeling, some strange fancy or misgiving, the chamber of his little mind was hung with black-I can only say that, during the three months he remained in my service, I could never induce him to open his mouth, and that up to the last hour of my departure he would never sing to me.

On leaving Canada, I gave him to Daniel Orris, an honest, faithful, loyal friend, who had accompanied me to the province. His station in life was about equal to that of poor Patterson, and accordingly, so soon as the bird was hung by him on the outside of his humble dwelling, he began to sing again as exquisitely as ever. He continued to do so all through Sir George Arthur's administration. He sang all the time Lord Durham was at work; he sang after the Legislative Council, the Executive Council, the House of Assembly of the province, had ceased for ever to exist; he sang all the while the Imperial Parliament were framing and agreeing to

an Act by which even the name of Upper Canada was to cease to exist; and then, feeling that the voice of an English lark could no longer be of any service to that noble portion of Her Majesty's dominionshe died!

Orris sent me his skin, his skull, and his legs. I took them to the very best artist in Londen-the gentleman who stuffs for the British Museum-who told me, to my great joy, that these remains were perfectly uninjured. After listening with great professional interest to the case, he promised me that he would exert his utmost talent;

and in about a month Charley returned to me with unruffled plumage, standing again on the little orchestra of his cage, with his mouth open, looking upwards-in short, in the attitude of singing, just as I have described him.

I have had the whole covered with a large glass case, and upon the dark wooden back of the cage there is pasted a piece of white paper, upon which I have written the following

words::