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The Annals of My Village; Being a Calendar of Nature, for Every Month in the Year. by the Author of 'select Female Biography'.
The Annals of My Village Being a Calendar of Nature for Every Month in the Year by the Author of 'select Female Biography' Author:Mary Roberts General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1831 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: 65 APRIL. " Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around, Full swell the woods ; and every music wakes, Mix'd in wild concert witb the warbling brooks. Increased the distant bleating of the bills, And hollow lowes responsive from the vales." Thomson. Virgil has elegantly given to the vernal season the epithet of blushing, because the shoots and buds of trees assume a ruddy appearance, previous to throwing out their leaves. This beautiful effect is very obvious in the deep beech woods of Gloucestershire. Unenlivened by that silver rind, and those multifarious tintings that diversify the stem and branches of the birch, they present a dreary appearance through the winter months. But in April a slight change of hue becomes perceptible. A casual observer might ascribe it to a drier air, a clearer atmosphere, or to those transient gleams of sunshine which seem to light up the face of nature with a smile. But the effectarises from that secret renovation which the aged fathers of the forest, and their sapling sons, are now experiencing. The swelling buds are first brown, then bronze, then of a reddish hue, and thus they continue till a light green bough is seen to wave, as if in triumph, from some warm sheltered nook. This is the signal for a general foliation; and he who retires in the evening, casting a look at his beloved woods, rather wishing, than expecting, that another week will cover them with leaves, often rejoices the next morning, to observe that the whole forest has burst into greenness and luxuriance. We speak of the miracles of nature, but this is only another name for an e...« less