teed "mixed " are all a livid white. | of the fourth foxgloves, and against the "The candytuft comes up chickweed poplar was to be trained black-briony. and the lobelia groundsel, and instead In the centre of the garden were to of the warranted finest lawn-grass,' I be white lilies and sweetbriar (which have sow-thistles and fool's-parsley." Satan hates), and the rest was to be "But these," said I, "are mere de- overgrown with ground-ivy, roots of tails.' "Not a bit of it," he replied, anemone and pimpernel being thickly "they are circumstantial evidence." set in amongst it. And against the poplar-tree was to be nailed with crossheaded nails a board with the old prayer upon it :

From witches and wizards and long-tailed buzzards,

And creeping things that run in hedge bottoms,

Good Lady, deliver us! "That should greatly conduce," said Tony thoughtfully, " to the prostigation of witches."

I was delighted at the turn affairs were taking, as I had long had a whim in hand which I knew not how to gratify, so knowing Touy to get more confirmed the more he was contradicted, I pooh-poohed the idea of witchcraft. But he overwhelmed me with his " reasons,' ” and ended up by asking me, which was not to be disputed with any honesty, if I had not seen that the shrubberies were haunted by whining hedgepigs and the spinney by death- And then we designed the other, boding owls; and went on to tell me though the rain had stopped, and the how only last week a brindled cat young speckled robins were out on the (much given to mewing at midnight) path, and the red-admiral sat sunning had spirited away the tabby of the its wings on the hollyhock opposite. house and taken its place. By this In a corner of Tony's garden was a time he had become so positive that the little pool in which lived newts and place was bewitched that I did not frogs (to which witches were ever parhesitate to agree with him, and said, tial), and over it hung black alders, the "We can soon put the matter right.' ." favorite tree of such as ride on broom"How?" he asked. "By planting," sticks. What more suitable and conI replied, "a small garden of such venient for the hags' pleasure ground things as witches cannot bear, and set- than this corner? And when we came ting out in another part another garden to examine it we found the pipy hemof such things as they take most delight lock growing there and a noble plant in. The one will serve to conciliate of hellebore, all hung with green bells. the more malignant, and the other to Surely just the place,terrify the weaker-minded." "We will do it," said Tony, "and let us plan it Where hellebore and hemlock seem to out at once."

weave

By the witches' tower,

| Round its dark vaults a melancholy bower, For spirits of the dead at night's enchanted

66

hour.

And so, while it was raining, we did. Of course the fruit garden, that which was to scare the witches, had to be a pentangle; and as there happened to They have been planting here be a poplar-tree upon which there was already," said Tony, "and this is no mistletoe growing-witches dare not doubt their rendezvous." 'We shall come near the mystic plant-just please them, then, all the more if we where there was a space of ground beautify the place with some more noxsuitable for our purpose, we made it ious plants." "We will make it abomone point of the pentangle; and at inably charming." "First of all, nighteach of the others set an elder and an shade. You cannot have too much of ash-tree, a hazel and a mountain-ash, that. Witches make their tea of it, the four most potent trees against evil and use the foaming juice of aconite for spirits that there are. At the foot of cream. There is plenty of that, too, in one was to be set bracken, of another the garden, the beautiful blue monksSt. John's wort, of the third vervain, hood." "Too good for witches," said

Tony. "Hush nothing can be too languid grace; the Canterbury bells good for those whom you are compelled are all ringing. to propitiate. Then there must be henbane and betony, and we will give them a juniper bush, for without this they cannot send brides mad. Yews are here already, and the red-branched berries of the arum 6 lords and ladies,' the children call them, but in Worcestershire we know them as 'bloody men's fingers' and we must add the mallow that softens men's bones and makes them cripples, and the clammy plantain that causes the black sweat in man. For the rest, Tony, do not trim the witches' garden except round under the yew where they sit, but place against the alder ready for their use wands of bay with a tuft of leaves at the end, and hemlock-stalks, and if you have them to spare an old broomstick or two.

Some nags were of the Brume-cane framit,

And some of the griene Bay-tree;

But mine was made of ane Humloke schaw,

And a stout stallion was he.

The birds are under shelter, but scarcely out of sight, for the rain drives out a multitude of flying, creeping things. The thrush and blackbird make short excursions to see how the worms are coming out; the fly-catcher, as if on a pendulum, swings across an open space, intercepting the fluttering, rain-impeded moths; the wagtail paddles along the edge of the path busily feeding; the sagacious robin, comfortably under a bush, watches for the caterpillars that drop by long threads off the wet leaves and dangle in the air. The cat, too, sits dry under the clematis that grows against the house, but now and again one big drop falls upon her, soaking slowly to the skin, and shoots sudden tremors along her furry sides, little zigzag lightnings of cold shiver. And the drenched spider slings herself hand over hand up the line, and, cruddled up under a leaf, sits cat-elbowed watching the rain-drops strike her slanting web and catch in it - useless captives these. The rain makes flat, finicking patterns on the path, all specks and dots, like Benares brass-work, but becomes bravely confluent where, under an overhanging fern, it sweeps in mimicry of a torrent round the corner of the rockwork to the grating, where its tiny Niagara dis"I was thinking," said Tony, appears. And, lo! the toad with its "whether I should not do that first." dandified, swaggering crawl, its elbows Raining again, in a soft, warm shower. out like a beau's, and resting every Listen to the garden talking while it now and again to look about at nothrains, a patter of voices, quick, eager, ing. Why not pick it up and cross multitudinous, full of hopes and proj- its back with silver? It brings good ects of what they will do " now that it fortune. "He who is not fortunate rains." How they will grow and shoot must provide himself with a toad, forth and bud and blossom. The roses and feed it in his house on bread and only are weeping their pretty flowers wine, inasmuch as they are either away, drop, drop, drop, one petal at a lords,' or 'women from without,' or time, and then, on a sudden, a whole uncomprehended genii,' who have sob-full. Pan has asked for them; fallen under some malediction. Hence they give them to Pan. And the they are not to be molested, lest when sweetbriar is worshipful with fra- offended they should come at night to grance, and like incense to Indra, spit upon the offender's eyes, which "Lord of the Rain," goes up the scent never heal, not even if he recommend of lavender. and southernwood and himself to the regard of Santa Lucia." thyme. The lilies, of great goodli- The "slow, soft toad," as Shelley calls head, divinely tall, sway with a stately, it, is a special favorite of mine.

You will then have done your best,
and if at any time you find a dead
shrew or bat about throw it into their
garden. Witches have their whims,
you know.
And, Tony," I added,
"when you have done all this, I think,
if I were you, I should also change my
seedsman."

I like

1

it because it carries a precious jewel in | ing of the drops hanging at the tips of its head that nobody has yet found, the leaves, there is no sign of the sumand because it knows how to hatch mer weather having broken. The sky cockatrices, 1 and because it eats gnats. is clear blue, and the sun is bright. He is a charming person altogether, The swifts are wheeling and screaming "the full-blown toad," and never, per- round the house-tops, and from fir-tree haps, more so than in Spenser's immor- and elm the birds are singing. And tal couplet: look at them on the lawn, in the field, everywhere. Listen to the humming

The grisly toadstool grown there might I

see

And loathed paddocks lording on the same. The worm, too, is now abroad,. telescoping its way along the soft ground, and sucking down into its burrow all the leaves it can reach. When the thrush is asleep it will be busiest, this terrible little creature that is responsible for the disappearance of cities and for the undoing and unmaking of all that man sets up. But will it, when daylight comes, remember about "the early bird"?

And here see "the compendious snail" upon his travels. He pays no rent and fears no brokers. For except when he is inside it his house is unfurnished. There is nothing to levy

upon :

Wherein he dwells, he dwells alone,
Except himself has chattels none,
Well satisfied to be his own
Whole treasure.

It is Davenant who calls it the "nim-
ble" snail, “hast'ning with all his ten-
ements on his back." And why not?
How fast would a squirrel go if it had
to carry its nest on its back? Or the
house-sparrow ? And it is truly de-
lightful looking at the creature, so
apparently harmless, so much to be
pitied, to remember, as De Gubernatis
says, that "the snail of popular super-
stition is demoniacal." And there is
no doubt that in the folk-lore of every
country the snail is treated as an ac-
complice of the devil in all his wicked

For the wasp

of the wasps in the trees. People stop
and say, "Listen to the bees :" but if
they will look they will see there are
no flowers overhead for the honey-
seekers. It is the wasps who are at
work, crowding on the sprays of silver
fir and spruce, and scraping together
the resin which they need for making
the paper of their nests.
is no more an idler than the bee, and
though it often finds a short cut to
honey by plundering the laden workers
of the hive, it is always busy, and ter-
ribly in earnest.
It has been a busy
year this for everything, for nearly all
the birds have second broods, and the
flowers are trying to blossom twice.
The heat of May and June tempted
them to flower, but they were only
half-hearted, and now that July has
given them rain they are making fresh
growths. The bright blue stars of the
chicory are reappearing, they had al-
most dwindled away for want of rain,
and the wild campanulas have picked
up heart of grace. The willow-herb,
which in Canada follows the track of
the forest fires filling up all the black
spaces along the railway lines — they
call it the "fire-weed" - has its roots in

moist places and is lusty and tall; and
the foxgloves that have had shade are
in the prime of their beauty. But the
mulleins, the beautiful plants with soft,
low bloom, the pride of the copse, are
downy leaves and noble spires of yel-
dwarfed, and so is the toad-flax that
makes the hedgerows lovely, and the
pretty rest-harrow spread out along the
ground brightening the waste corners
of the fields is deeper in color and
much smaller than in other years.
This deepening of color has been very
noticeable. Whole fields of bird's-foot
trefoil have this July been fiery orange,
while in other years children found it

through it quickly and well. On the right another field, with a pretty wood beyond it, runs up almost close to the old white foundations of the house, which has been here for many centuries, has seen many changes, was burnt by the English in the days of Du Guesclin, was rebuilt, and sold to a peasant

a morning's work to gather a handful | field, part of the park, with a fine crop of the darker flowers. The campions, of hay, now being mown by dark men too, were not pink, but rich rosy red. dressed in white and blue, with sunThe hawks are out of their reckoning, burnt straw hats. They shout and and beating the hedges they found chatter over their work, but get none of the tiny chicks they expected. The birds were well grown in July and quite able to take care of themselves, and now, with August in its second week, they are as strong of wing as ever they were on the fatal first. What a charming bird it is, this bold little yeoman of our country-side, and in all the home-life of birds can there be any-after the Revolution as biens nationaux thing more engaging than the par- for the price of a yoke of oxen. tridge's care of her eggs and young more than fifty years of degradation, ones? Live happily with your family it was bought again, and restored to while you may, little bird, for the day something of its former state. of your trouble is close upon you, when the covey you have loved so well will be scattered, and even if you live your-pies and a pretty blue weed which noself to call them to you, you will find your voice unheeded, perhaps by both mate and chick. PHIL ROBINSON.

From The Spectator.

IN THE AVENUE.

After

But to return to the field; it is now pasture, pink sainfoin, varied with pop

body seems to know the name of; and every morning and afternoon it is visited by a few cows, goats, and sheep, which are watched and actively driven from place to place by a boy and a dog, to prevent them from trespassing into the unfenced woods and fields beyond. Below this, still on the right of the avenue, is a small meadow from which the hay has been cleared. The wood

TURNING Out of the broad courtyard of the château, where the sun burns all day in spite of the large old walnut-runs down behind it, and the lower trees laden with fruit, the acacia and paulownia and fir-trees that lean over it, the avenue follows a gentle slope downhill to the level of the stream. After that, a very short and slight ascent brings it to an end at the low white gates, generally open, on the lower road of the village. On each side is a border of grass, green and rich in perpetual shade; and beyond it a confused line of trees, planted close together and several deep, whose only law is to grow thick and tall and to meet far overhead, making a long aisle of green and gold and grey, through which the sun looks in and plays harmlessly on the brown, even road. Most of the trees are elm, but there are also chestnut, lime, oak, sycamore, acacia, ailanthus, and many others, especially poplars of two or three kinds, but their own kingdom is below. On the left, beyond the trees, is an open sunny

half of it falls away into a large pond. edged with rushes and willows. The whole meadow is full of springs; near the pond an odd little fortification has been made, a small thatched house on a mound which has been planted with roses, and is defended by ditches full of water, fenced from the pond with wire. This is the home of a colony of ducks, and only the grown members of the family can get away into the open waters of the pond, while the little ones swim about in the safe ditches, whose steep banks they cannot climb or fly over. All this is to defend them from the water-rats, and still more terrible, the otters, which abound in the waters of this country. In their own esteem, the most important inmates of this pond are certainly the frogs, who croak with an intelligent variety hardly to be realized except by those who pay them real attention.

Their voices and the soft, slow hoot of | himself adds much to the picturesquethe owls, who live, as they ought, in an ness of the scene. Tall, fair, with ivied tower of their own, give an im- handsome features and a short, brown pression of remoteness, both in time beard, he might stand as a model for and place, which adds its romantic one of the younger Apostles. He is touch to the cheerful peace of this old dressed in white, with a large straw hat French home. and bare feet, which he thrusts respectGoing back to the other side of the fully into a pair of felt shoes when maavenue, to the field where the men are dame comes into the garden. Farther mowing, we find its lower side bounded down, the avenue has the nature of a by a row of elms almost as tall and causeway. It runs between small, low stately as one would see in Warwick-meadows deep in grass, and by two shire. They may have been planted, bridges with stone balustrades now it is suggested, in the time of Henry growing mossy, it crosses first the IV., when les ormes were much in back-water which supplies the garden fashion. One does not know if then, canals, then the river itself, its cool, as now, they sheltered a garden from dark stream winding between banks the east winds; a most quaint garden along which the poplars, white, black, which lies low and square, sheltered Lombardy, aspen, with grey, straight also from the north by the avenue, trunks and trembling leaves of silverysurrounded by narrow canals and ap- green, stand in ordered rows. The proached by wooden bridges. Here in squares of these little meadows are the brown, weedy water the frogs marked out and shaded by them. Becroak even more agreeably than in the tween their lines one catches sight of pond on the other side; they have less the white village houses on the slope, anxieties perhaps, for the ducks, their the white church with its grey spire. natural enemies, seldom come here. All lies still in the heat, which is almost One old frog in this shady retreat has African. Above on the terrace, when a most powerful voice, and his talk one returns there from these depths of reminds one of a dog crunching a watery brown and green and grey, the bone. He seems really happy in his lizards dart between crevices in the slowly moving stream, as it washes the white stones. In the evening the toads dark, trailing, overhanging banks of add their music, a very small ringing the garden. This is chiefly a kitchen- of silver bells. garden, and here grows some of the fine supply of vegetables which is necessary to a French house. There is also a great deal of small fruit, but beyond the strawberry-beds are lines of rose-bushes laden with roses of every color. Here the gardener is generally to be found, assisted in his work by his little brown-faced wife and a troop of cropped, blue-clad children. Jules

People pass up and down the avenue all day; and if you happen to be sitting there, which is not seldom, you exchange a kind word with every one. Though they have the air of being accustomed to a hot climate, this oppressive, tropical air is too much for most of them. "Un temps malade, pardié!"—and the description strikes one as just.

ARTIFICIAL CLOUDS.-Experiments have been made at the Jardin d'Acclimation in producing artificial clouds as a protection against frost. A series of pinewood fires were lighted, occasioning columns of black smoke, which, according to the inventor of the method, is converted into a thick, stationary fog, raising the temperature by

four or five degrees. That morning, however, there was too much wind, and the smoke was driven towards the seal-pond to the great discomfort of its inmates. Some of the agriculturists present stated, however, that the vine-growers in the Gironde had successfully adopted the plan.