chain, I was obliged to select a lord mayor. Hospital bones supplied me with cyclamen in any quantity, which I intermixed with a few seeds from the Cyclades Islands, and the scurvy-grass came up spontaneously; while manure from different fields of battle proved extremely favourable to the hemanthus or bloodflower, the trumpet-flower and laurel, as well as to widow-wail and cypress. A few sample skulls from the poet's corner of a German abbey furnished poet's cassia, grass of Parnassus, and bays, in about equal quantities, with wormwood, crab, thistle, stinging-nettle, prickly holly, teasel, and loose-strife. Courtiers and ministers, when converted into manure, secured an ample return of jack-in-a-box, service-apples, climbers, supple-jacks, parasite plants, and that species of sun-flower which invariably turns to the rising luminary. Nabobs form a capital compost for hepatica, liver-wort, spleen-wort, hips, and pine; and from those who had three or four stars at the India-house, I raised some particularly fine China asters. A good show of adonis, narcissus, jessamine, cockscomb, dandelion, money-flower, and buckthorn, may be obtained from dandies, although they are apt to encumber the ground with tickweed; while a good drilling with dandisettes is essential to those beds in which you wish to raise Venus's looking-glass, Venus's catchfly, columbines, and love-apples. A single dressing of jockies will ensure you a quick return of horse-mint,, veronica or speedwell, and colt's-foot; and a very slight layer of critics suffices for a good thick spread of scorpion senna, viper's bugloss, serpent's tongue, poison-nut, nightshade, and hellebore. If you are fond of raising stocks, manure your bed with jobbers; wine-merchants form the most congenial stimulant for sloes, fortune-hunters for the marygold and goldenrod, and drunkards for Canary wines, mad-wort and horehound. Failing in repeated attempts to raise the chaste tree from the bones of nuns, which gave me nothing but liquorice-root, I applied those of a dairy-maid, and not only succeeded perfectly in my object, but obtained a good crop of butter-wort, milk-wort, and heart's-ease. I was equally unsuccessful in raising any sage, honesty, or everlasting from monks; but they yielded a plentiful bed of monk's hood, or jesuit's bark, medlars, and cardinal flowers. My importation of shoemakers was unforNo. 22.

tunately too scanty to try their effect upon a large scale, but I contrived to procure from them two or three ladies' slippers. As school-boys are raised by birch, it may be hardly necessary to mention, that when reduced to manure, they return the compliment; but it may be useful to make known as widely as possible, that dancing-masters supply the best hops and capers, besides quickening the growth of the citharexylum or fiddle-wood. For your mimosas or sensitive plants there is nothing better than a layer of novel-readers, and you may use up the first bad author that you can disinter for all the poppies you may require. Coffee-house waiters will keep you supplied in cummin; chronologists furnish the best dates, post-office men serve well for rearing scarlet-runners, poulterers for hen-bane, tailors for cabbage, and physicians for truffles, or any thing that requires to be quickly buried. I could have raised a few bachelors' buttons from the bones of that class; but as nobody cares a button for bachelors, I did not think it worth while. As a general remark it may be noticed, that young people produce the passion-flower in abundance, while those of a more advanced age may be beneficially used for the eldertree, the sloe, and snapdragon; aud with respect to different nations, my experiments are only sufficiently advanced to enable me to state that Frenchmen are favourable to garlic, and that Poles are very good for hops. Of mint I have never been able to raise much; but as to thyme, I have so large a supply, as the reader will easily perceive, that I am enabled to throw it away; and as he may not possibly be in a similar predicament, I shall refer him for the rest of my experiments to the records of the Horticultural Society.

It is noticed by Dr. Forster, that about this time the purple goatsbeard tragopogon porrifolius and the yellow goatsbeard tragopogon pratensis begin to blow; and that of all the indices in the HOROLOGIUM FLORE the above plants are the most regular: they open their flowers at sunrise, and shut them so regularly at mid-day, that they have been called by the whimsical name of go to bed at noon. They are as regular as a clock, and are mentioned as such in the following verses:

still remain in blow, as violets, hearteases, hepaticas, narcissi, some hyacinths, marsh marigolds, wood anemonies, garden anemonies, &c. &c. The cuckoo pint, or lord and lady Arum, is now in prime.

The nations among whom a taste for flowers was first discovered to prevail in modern times, were China, Persia, and Turkey. The vegetable treasures of the eastern world were assembled at Constantinople, whence they passed into Italy, Germany, and Holland, and from the latter into England; and since botany has assumed the character of a science,

we have laid the whole world under contribution for trees, and shrubs, and flowers, which we have not only made our own, but generally improved in vigour and beauty. The passion for flowers preceded that of ornamental gardening. The Dutch system of straight walks, enclosed by high clipped hedges of yew or holly, at length prevailed; and tulips and hyacinths bloomed under the sheltered windings of the "Walls of Troy," most ingeniously traced in box and yew. A taste for gardening, which, however formal, is found at length to be preferable to the absurd winding paths, and the close imitation of wild nature by art, which modern gardenmakers have pretended to of late years. The learned baron Maseres used to say, "Such a garden was to be had every where wild in summer, and in a garden formality was preferable."

Proverbs relating to May.

A cold May and a windy
Makes a fat barn and a findy,

A hot May makes a fat churchyard.

Proverbs relating to the Weather and Seasons generally.

Collected by Dr. Forster.

Drought never bred dearth in England.
Whoso hath but a mouth, shall ne'er in
England suffer drought.

When the sand doth feed the clay,
England woe and welladay;
But when the clay doth feed the sand,
Then it is well with Angle land.

After a famine in the stall,
Comes a famine in the hall.

When the cuckoo comes to the bare thorn,
Sell your cow, and buy your corn;
But when she comes to the full bit,
Sell your corn, and buy your sheep.
If the cock moult before the hen,
We shall have weather thick and thin;

But if the hen moult before the cock,
We shall have weather hard as a block.
As the days lengthen, so the cold strengthen
If there be a rainbow in the eve, it will rain
and leave,

But if there be a rainbow in the morrow, it
will neither lend nor borrow.
A rainbow in the morning
Is the shepherd's warning;
But a rainbow at night
Is the shepherd's delight.
No tempest, good July,
Lest corn come off blue by.
When the wind's in the east,
When the wind's in the south,
It's neither good for man nor beast.

It's in the rain's mouth.

When the wind's in the south,
It blows the bait into the fishes' mouth.
No weather is ill,
If the wind be still.

When the sloe-tree is as white as a sheet,
Sow your barley, whether it be dry or wet.
A green winter makes a fat churchyard.
Hail brings frost in the tail.
A snow year, a rìch year.
Winter's thunder's summer's wonder.

FLORAL DIRECTORY. Mouse Ear. Hieracium Pilosella. Dedicated to St. Eric.

May 19.

St. Peter Celestine, Pope, A. D. 1296. St. Pudentiana. St. Dunstan, Abp. of Canterbury, A. D. 988.

St. Dunstan.

He was born at Glastonbury, of which monastery he became abbot, and died archbishop of Canterbury in 988.*

The legend of St. Dunstan relates many miracles of him, the most popular of which is to this effect; that St. Dunstan, as the fact really was, became expert in goldsmith's work; it then gives as a story, that while he was busied in making a chalice, the devil annoyed him by his personal appearance, and tempted him; whereupon St. Dunstan suddenly seized the fiend by the nose with a pair of iron tongs, burning hot, and so held him while he roared and cried till the night was far spent.

* Butler.

adiga

On lord mayor's day, in 1687, the pageants of sir John Shorter, knt, as lord mayor, were very splendid. He was of the company of goldsmiths, who, at their own expense, provided one of the pageants representing this miracle of St. Dunstan. It must have been of amazing size, for it was a "Hieroglyphic of the Company," consisting of a spacious laboratory or workhouse, containing several conveniences and distinct apartments, for the different operators and artificers, with forges, anvils, hammers, and all instruments proper for the mystery of the goldsmiths. In the middle of the frontispiece, on a rich golden chair of state, sat ST. DUNSTAN, the ancient patron and tutelar guardian of the company. He was attired, to express his prelatical dignity and canonization, in a robe of fine lawn, with a cope over it of shining cloth of gold reaching to the ground. He wore a golden mitre beset with precious

and the Bebil.

stones, and bore in his left hand a golden crosier, and in his right a pair of goldsmith's tongs. Behind him were Orpheus and Amphion playing on melodious instruments; standing more forward were the cham of Tartary, and the grand sultan, who, being "conquered by the christian harmony, seemed to sue for reconcilement." At the steps of the prelatical throne were a goldsmith's forge and furnace, with fire, crucibles, and gold, and a workman blowing the bellows. On each side was a large press of gold and silver plate. Towards the front were shops of artificers and jewellers all at work, with anvils, hammers, and instruments for enamelling, beating out gold and silver plate; on a step below St. Dunstan, sat an assay-master, with his trial-balance and implements, There were two apartments for the processes of disgrossing, flatting, and drawing gold and silver wire, and the fining, melting, smelting, refining, and separating of gold and silver, both by fire and water. Another apartment contained a forge, with miners in canvass breeches, red waistcoats and red caps, bearing spades, pickaxes, twibbles, and crows for sinking shafts and making adits. The lord mayor, having approached and viewed the curiosity of the pageant, was addressed in