the Winter are met with in the warmer regions of India, Syria, Egypt, &c. and at the Cape of Good Hope. The course of their flight is discovered by the loud noise they make, for they soar to such a height as to be hardly visible to the naked eye. Like the Wild Geese, they form themselves into different figures, describing a wedge, a triangle, or a circle. It is said that they formerly visited the fens and marshes of this island in large flocks, but they have now entirely forsaken it.

We have seen Storks in Alsace, and also in Holland, as late as the end of August, and we believe they abide there much later.

Before the Storks take their departure from their northern Summer residence, they assemble in large flocks, and seem to confer on the plan of their projected route. Though they are very silent at other times, on this occasion they make a singular clattering noise with their bills, and all seems bustle and consultation. It is said that the first north wind is the signal for their departure, when the whole body become silent, and move at once, generally in the night, and, taking an extensive spiral course, they are soon lost in the air.

The Heron is not actually migratory, but traverses the country to a great distance in quest of some convenient or favourite fishing spot, and in its aërial journies soars to a great height, to which the eye is directed by its harsh cry, uttered from time to time while on the wing. In flying it draws the head between the shoulders, and the legs stretched out seem, like the longer tails of some birds, to serve the office of a rudder. The motion of their wings is heavy and flagging, and yet they get forward at a greater rate than would be imagined.

Jeremiah vii. 7. notices the annual migration of Cranes and Storks, as also that of the Swallow. The story is well known of a brass plate fixed on a Swallow with this inscription, "Prithee, Swallow, whither goest thou in Winter?" The bird returned with the answer subjoined, "To Anthony of Athens, why doest thou inquire.'

The Night Heron is known by its harsh cry like a person straining to vomit.

The booming moan of the Bittern is before described.

The elevated and marshalled flight of the Wild Geese, seems dictated by geometrical instinct: shaped like a wedge, they cut the air with less individual exertion; and it is conjectured, that the change of its form from an inverted V, an A, and L, or a straight line, is occasioned by the leader of the van's quitting his post at the point of the angle through

fatigue, dropping into the rear, and leaving his place to be occupied by another.

We shall close our account of Winter birds with the following anecdote from Bewick :-" In the Winter of 1797, the gamekeeper of E. M. Pleydell, Esq. of Whatcombe, in Dorsetshire, brought him a Woodcock, which he had caught in a net set for rabbits, alive and unhurt. Mr. P. scratched the date upon a bit of thin brass, and bent it round on the Woodcock's leg, and let it fly. In December the next year, Mr. Pleydell shot this bird with the brass about its leg, in the very same wood where it had been first caught by the gamekeeper."

October 30. St. Marcellus Martyr. St. Germanus Bp. C. St. Asterias Bp. Father of the Church.

Orises VII. 7'. and sets at IV. 53'.

St. Marcellus was a Roman centurion in the legion of Trajan in Spain in the third century, and was sentenced to death for declaring himself a Christian, and throwing away his badges of honour on the day of the grand festive celebration of the birthday of Maximian Herculeus in 298.

CHRONOLOGY.-Henry VII. crowned at Westminster in 1485. The line of the Tudors with him began; and he today instituted the Yeomen of the Guards.

Black Friars Bridge first began to be built, the foundation stone being recorded to have been laid to day in 1760.

FLORA. The yellow colour which the leaves assume at this season, and then beginning to fall, remind us of the following lines of Pope's Homer, of which Johnson used to be very fond

Like leaves on trees, the race of man is found

Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following Spring supplies,

They fall successive and successive rise;

So generations in their course decay,

So nourish these when those are passed away.

October 31. St. Quintin Martyr. St. Wolfgang, Bp. St. Foillan Martyr..

The feast of St. Stachys takes place today in the Greek church, and Narcissus also occurs to day in some Calendars.

ALLHALLOWS EVE.- Hallow Even is the Vigil of All Saints' Day, and it is customary on this night with young people in the North of England to dive for Apples, or catch at them, when stuck upon one end of a kind of hanging beam, at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle, and that with their mouths only, their hands being tied behind their backs.

Nuts and Apples chiefly compose the entertainment, and from the custom of flinging the former into the fire, or cracking them with their teeth, it has doubtless had its vulgar name of Nutcrack Night.

Mr. Pennant tells us, in his Tour in Scotland, that the young women there determine the figure and size of their husbands by drawing cabbages blindfold on Allhallow Even, and, like the English, fling Nuts into the fire.

"On Nuts burning on Allhallows Eve," from a Collection of Poems printed at Dublin in 1801, p. 127:

These glowing Nuts are emblems true

Of what in human life we view;
The illmatched couple fret and fume,
And thus, in strife themselves consume;
Or, from each other wildly start,

And with a noise for ever part.

But see the happy happy pair,

Of genuine love and truth sincere;

With mutual fondness, while they burn,
Still to each other kindly turn:

And as the vital sparks decay,

Together gently sink away:

Till life's fierce ordeal being past,
Their mingled ashes rest at last.

"The passion of prying into futurity," says Mr. Burns, "makes a striking part of the history of human nature in its rude state, in all ages and nations; and it may be some entertainment to a philosophic mind to see the remains of it among the more unenlightened in our own."

The minister of Callander in Perthshire, mentioning peculiar customs, says, "On All Saints Even they set up bonfires in every village. When the bonfire is consumed, the ashes are carefully collected into the form of a circle. There is a stone put in, near the circumference, for every person of the several families interested in the bonfire; and whatever stone is moved out of its place, or injured before

next morning, the person represented by that stone is devoted, or fey; and is supposed not to live twelve months. from that day. The people received the consecrated fire from the Druid priests next morning, the virtues of which were supposed to continue for a year."-See Sinclair's Code of Health, &c.

There was also a divination by Lady Birds :

Fly Lady Bird, North, South, or East, or West,

Fly where the Girl is found that I love best.

Snails were used in love divinations: they were set to crawl on the hearth, and were also thought to mark in the ashes the initials of the lover's name.

On the subject of love divinations there is a curious. passage in Theocritus, Idyllium 3d, where the shepherd says:

Εγνων πρὰν ; ὁκά μεν μεμναμένω εἰ φιλέεις με,
Οὐδὲ τὸ τηλέφιλον ποτεμάξατο το πλατάγημα
Αλλ' αὕτως απαλῷ ποτι πάχει εξεμαρανθη.

Intellexi nuper, cum quaererem, an me amares,
Telephilum allisum non edidit sonum;

Sed frustra in tenero cubito exaruit.

We shall finish our account of this evening with an extract from

It may be proper to notice that our forefathers began to watch and keep holy certain festivals on the preceding evening, here called Vigils. Bells used sometimes to begin to be rung on the Vigils, and continued all night, to keep Christians wakeful; and Cocks were said to maintain vigilance by crowing all night at Christmas.

NOVEMBER. WINTERMONAT. NEBULOSUS.

November 1. ALL SAINTS. St. Caesarius Martyr. St. Mary Martyr. St. Marcellus Bishop. St. Fortunatus Bishop. St. Benignus. St. Austremonius. St. Harold VI. Martyr.

Orises vII. 11'. and sets at Iv. 49'.

KALENDAE NOVEMBRIS.-Diana tutela hic mensis.—Rom. Cal.

ALL SAINTS DAY.-The church in this great festival honours all the Saints rising together in glory. The Latin term Reliqua seems to imply that the feast was instituted to celebrate all the remainder of the Saints not specified under their proper day. This, however, is not really the case. The institution of this festival originated in the dedication of the great church of the Pantheon in Rome, formerly a heathen temple built by Marcus Agrippa.-See Butler's Lives, vol. xi. p. 1. The French call today Le Toussaint, a corruption of Tous les Saints.

This day was formerly dedicated by superstition to the angel presiding over fruits, and called Lamas Ubhal, or La Messe des Pommes. Hence these Saxon words being corrupted into Lambs' wool by the later English, several customs arose in which wool was made use of. Lambs' wool in Ireland is a constant ingredient at a merry making on Holy Eve, and on All Saints' Day; and it is made there by bruising roasted Apples and mixing them with ale, or sometimes with milk. Formerly white wine was frequently used for ale. Lambs' wool, Apples, and Nuts are added as a necessary part of the entertainment, and the young folks amuse themselves with burning Nuts in pairs on the bar of the grate, or among the warm embers, to which they give their name and that of their lovers, or those of their friends