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preached continually against "doing observance to a morn of May," and were greatly the means of suppressing May-sports, and May-gatherings. The first day of this month was also called Robin Hood's day; and the sincere and earnest bishop Latimer complained, that once when he was about to preach in a town on that day, he could get no audience; because all the young men and maidens, "were gone a maying.' found," said he, "the churches fast locked. I tarryed there half an houre or more, and at last, the key was found; one of the parish came to me and says, 'Syr, this is a busy day with us, we cannot hear you; it is Robin Hood's day. The parish are gone abroad to gather for Robin Hood. I pray you let them not. So," as the good bishop observes, "he was fain to give place to Robin Hood, and his men."

An infusion of the hawthorn-bark gives a yellow dye; and, if mixed with copperas, yields a fine black colour.

The common hawthorn was the distinguishing badge of the royal house of Tudor. Miss Strickland thus states its origin: When the body of Richard III. was slain at Redmore Heath, it was plundered of its armour and ornaments. "The crown was hidden by a soldier in a hawthorn bush; but was soon found, and carried back to lord Stanley; who placed it on the head of his son-in-law, saluting him by the title of Henry VII.; while the victorious army sang Te Deum, on the blood-stained heath.

'Oh Redmore, then it seem'd thy name was not in vain!'

"It was in memory of this picturesque fact, that the red-berried hawthorn once sheltered the crown of England, that the house of Tudor assumed the device of a crown in a bush of fruited hawthorn. The proverb of Cleave to the crown though it hang on a bush,' alludes to the same circumstance.'

The wild-cherry, the apple, the pear, and the mountain ash; are all now in bloom in hedgerow, or copse; while the common is bright with the yellow flowers of the furze, (Ulex Europaus.) Unheeded by those who can delight only in the flower brought from afar, it is ever an object of admiration to the lover of simple beauty. Linnæus fell on his knees, and thanked God for its loveliness, when first he beheld it. Among the plants of his native land, he knew not one which could equal it; and he attempted in vain to introduce it into Sweden. Hardy as it is, and capable of bearing the winds which sweep over the bleak moorland, or by the seashore; yet it would not grow in the northern land, and even in the garden in which Linnæus planted it, it sickened and died. Dillenius, too, looked upon our heath-lands, covered with its profusion of golden flowers, and said that he could not find words to express the pleasure which the sight of this plant had given him. The furze is also an evergreen. Its flowers last from May till summer is ended; and even during nipping frosts, the bush is sometimes thick with its half-expanded flowers, which seem only awaiting the sunshine, to stand out like so

many glittering butterflies upon the spiny branches.

common

The furze is used for hedges, and its young tops are eaten by animals. To the poor it furnishes winter firing, and is often gathered from the heath, and stacked by the cottage-door for that purpose. In former times, large tracts of were cultivated with the shrub, in various parts of Devonshire, to supply the winter fuel. The numerous pods which hang on the summer bush, are soon cleared away by the birds, and a store of honey is furnished to the bees by their fragrant pea-shaped flowers. The summer wind bears to the traveller a delightful odour from the common covered with the furze; and so beautiful is it that we have not a wild flower which better deserves the praises that the poets have lavished upon it. The French call this plant, jonc marin, because it bears the sea-breeze so well. The name of Ulex is derived from a Celtic word, signifying a sharp point; in Scotland, it is usually termed gorse, or whin. The Russian cultivates it in a green-house, as one of his rarest flowers. A double variety of furze grows wild on the heaths of Devonshire, and is a handsome and fragrant addition to the bushes and trees of the shrubbery.

On many a hedge may now be seen the graceful flowers of the plant, called, familiarly, traveller's joy, or virgin's bower, or wild clematis. It is the clematis vitalba of the botanist. The Greek word from which its

name is taken, signifies the young shoot of a vine, or tendril, and indicates its twining nature. The clematis, though rare in the northern portions of this country, is very abundant in the greater part of England, especially in the south, and on limestone, or chalky soils, where, in May, or June, its clusters of greenish white are thickly scattered over the hedges. The flowers are succeeded by a quantity of seeds, crowned with tufts of silvery down, which look very beautiful through the greater part of the winter. and the plant may well be abundant, for these feathered seeds are exactly suited for flying on the air, and are often carried about by birds. In winter these little tufts of down are stripped off by the harvest mice, which make of them and other materials, soft little nests, as warm as a feather bed, and not unlike the nests of a bird, and there, leaving their cheerless little dwellings in the earth, they come and spend a part of their time.

The stems of the clematis often extend more than twenty feet over the hedge; and, although it is destitute of the curling tendrils, which, like those of the vine, support the plant, yet its flexible branches answer the purpose more fully. The young stems are, in this month, of a purplish green colour, but become brown and hard in the course of the summer; and then they serve the cottagers instead of pipes, for they are often smoked by country people. Bishop Mant has some lines on this pretty flower:

"The Traveller's Joy,
Most beauteous when its flowers assume
Their autumn form of feathery plume:
The Traveller's Joy! name well bestow'd
On that wild plant, which by the road
Of Southern England, to adorn

Fails not the hedge of prickly thorn,
On wilding rose-bush, apt to creep
O'er the dry limestone's craggy steep,
There still a gay companion near
To the way-faring traveller."

The old herbalist, Gerarde, gave the flower this name. He says, "This is commonly called, Viorna quasi via ornana, of decking and adorning waies and hedges where people travel, and therefore I have named it the Traveller's Joy."

Growing in small groups, on hedgebanks, or on heaths or woods, the whortleberry bush is now coming into blossom. There are four wild species of this plant, but the most common is that called the bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus.) This shrub is low and straggling, seldom found alone, but generally clustering on different spots of the land on which it appears. Indeed, this tribe of plants is never found growing singly. We do not meet with an individual plant, but it always grows in numbers, and generally abounds in the neighbourhood for some miles. This species is an elegant little plant, its leaves are of a beautiful green, and its small red flowers hang among them like so many waxen cups. Children are fond of the bilberry, or hurtleberry, as it is often called; and, in some of the northern counties, this fruit is sold in the markets for tarts. The people of Devonshire eat the ber