feed the brood. The drones are regularly massacred by the workers in the beginning of the Autumn. It is the office of the Queen Bee to lay the eggs, which remain about three days in the cells before they are hatched. A small white worm then appears, called, indifferently, worm, larva, maggot, or grub this larva is fed with honey for some days, and then changes into a nymph, or pupa. After passing a certain period in this state, it comes forth a perfect winged insect. The appearance of Bees is a certain indication that flowers are to be met with; for now this golden daughter of the Spring,'

From mead to mead, in wanton labour roves,
And loads its little thigh, or gilds its wing
With all the essence of the flushing groves;
Extracts the aromatic soul of flowers,

And, humming in delight, its waxen bowers

Fills with the luscious spoils, and lives ambrosial hours.—From T. T. In several parts of South Africa, the Bees suspend their honeycomb from edges of rocks; and these nests are easily discoverable by the Hottentots, who implicitly rely on the direction of a little brown bird, denominated the Indicator, or Honey Bird, that, on the discovery of a nest, flies in quest of some person, to whom it makes known the fruit of its research, by whistling and flying_towards the place. In some parts of France, and also of Piedmont, there are floating apiaries of a hundred beehives.

On the Floating Hives, by Rogers.

So through the vales of Loire the beehives glide,
The light raft dropping with the silent tide;
So, till the laughing scenes are lost in sight,

The busy people wing their various flight,

Culling unnumbered sweets from nameless flowers,
That scent the vineyard in its purple hours.

Virgil thus marks out the place proper for a beehive in

his Georgicks, lib. iv. 8. :

Principio sedes apibus statioque petenda,

Quo neque sit ventis aditus (nam pabula venti

Ferre domum prohibent), neque oves hoedique petulci
Floribus insultent, aut errans bucula campo

Decutiat rorem, et surgentes atterat herbas.

Absint et picti squalentia terga lacerti

Pinguibus à stabulis, meropesque, aliaeque volucres,
Et manibus Procne pectus signata cruentis.
Omnia nam late vastant, ipsasque volantes
Ore ferunt, dulcem nidis immitibus escam.
At liquidi fontes, et stagna virentia musco
Adsint, et tenuis fugiens per gramina rivus:
Palmaque vestibulum, aut ingens oleaster inumbret,
Ut, cùm prima novi ducent examina reges
Vere suo, ludetque favis emissa juventus;
Vicina invitet decedere ripa calori,
Obviaque hospitiis teneat frondentibus arbos.

In medium, seu stabit iners, seu profluet humor,
Transversas salices et grandia conjice saxa:
Pontibus ut crebris possint consistere, et alas
Pandere ad aestivum solem; si forte morantes
Sparserit, aut praeceps Neptuno immerserit Eurus.
Haec circum casiae virides, et olentia late
Serpylla, et graviter spirantis copia thymbrae
Floreat irriguumque bibant violaria fontem.
The Commonwealth of Bees.

So work the Honey Bees;

Creatures, that, by a rule in nature, teach
The act of order to a people kingdom.
They have a king, and officers of sorts:
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the Summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent royal of their emperor:
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrrow gate;
The sadeyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone.

March 20. St. Cuthbert, C. Bishop of Lindisfarne. St. Hulfran, Bishop of Sens.

St. Cuthbert was born near Milros in Tweedside, and at that abbey he took the monastic order, in consequence of seeing the spirit of St. Aidan carried up to heaven, which vision he had on the top of a mountain while watching his father's sheep. St. Aidan died at Lindisfarne at that same moment. See Butler's Lives, iii. p. 218.

CHRONOLOGY.-Sir Isaac Newton died in 1727.

On Sir I. Newton, by Thomson.

But Newton calls

For other notes of gratulation high,

For now he wanders through those endless worlds
He here so well descried, and wondering talks,

And hymns their Author with his glad compeers.

FLORA.-The blowing of both the Violet and Heartsease often take place unseasonably early in February; but this species V. odorata now begins to be common, and is one of the sweetest of our early flowers.

Gardens are now rendered gay by the yellow, the blue, and the white striped Crocusses, which adorn the borders with a rich mixture of the brightest colours. The little shrubs of pinkflowered Mezereon are in their beauty. The fields look green with the springing Grass, but few wild flowers

as yet appear to decorate the ground: Daisies, however, begin to be sprinkled over the dry pastures; and the moist banks of ditches are enlivened with the glossy starlike yellow flowers of Pilewort. Towards the end of the month, Primroses peep out beneath the hedges; and the most delightfully fragrant of all flowers, the Violet, discovers itself by the perfume it imparts to the surrounding air, before the eye has perceived it in its lowly bed. Shakespeare compares an exquisitely sweet strain of music to the delicious scent of this flower:

Soft Strains of Music.

If Music be the food of love, play on.
Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.-
That strain again; it had a dying fall:

Oh! it came o'er my ear like the sweet South,
That breathes upon a bank of Violets,

Stealing, and giving odour!

There are several kinds of Violets; but the fragrant both blue and white is the earliest, thence called the March Violet. To these flowers Shakespeare adds the Daffodil, Which comes before the Swallow dares, and takes

The Winds of March with beauty.

Besides the Hazel, the Sallow, the Willow, and the Osier begin now to enliven the hedges with their catkins full of yellow dust; and the Alder trees are covered with a kind of black bunches, which are the male and female flowers.

Napoleon, returning this eve from Elba, got the whimsical name of Corporal Violet. This association of ideas of sense with those of memory is characteristic of the human mind, and is referrible to the physical causes of the catenation of ideas, and of their recurrence in the same trains at distant periods. Sounds, as well as particular smells, frequently recall to the mind past scenes with which they seem to have little or no connexion, merely from having been formerly connected by accident with those scenes: thus, in smelling the various odours of flowers in the garden, we are involuntarily reminded of different periods and scenes of our past life, particularly those of childhood. Sounds and and music have a similar effect. Thus Cowper observes:There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;

And as the mind is pitched, the ear is pleased
With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave.
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear

In cadence sweet, now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on!

With easy force it opens all the cells
Where memory slept. Wherever I have heard
A kindred melody, the scene recurs,

And with it all its pleasures and its pains.
Such comprehensive views the spirit takes,
That in a few short moments I retrace,
As in a map the voyager his course,

The windings of my way through many years.

March 21. St. Benedict, A. St. Enneus.
SS. Serapion.

St. Benedict, or Benet, the Patriarch of the Western Monks, was born in Norica in 480, and died in 543. This Saint caused the miraculous springing up of a Fountain by his prayers, to water two distressed monasteries, of which Butler gives a full and interesting account. This miracle happened in the monastery of St. John.

COELUM.-Table showing the Extremes of Temperature and Pressure in March and April, during ten years.

It is to be observed, that we have arranged the classes of natural

N. B. See February 25, August 26 and 31, and December 15 and 16, where similar Tables for other months will be found.

CHRONOLOGY.-Battle of Alexandria in 1801.

We resume today the subject of sweet Violets, by subjoining the following beautiful Sonnet of Lorenzo di Medici, translated by Mr. Roscoe.

The Violets.

Not from the verdant garden's cultured bound,
That breathes of Paestum's aromatic gale,
We sprung; but nurslings of the lonely vale,
'Midst woods obscure and native glooms were found:
'Midst woods and glooms, whose tangled brakes around
Once Venus sorrowing traced, as all forlorn
She sought Adonis, when a lurking thorn
Deep on her foot impressed an impious wound.
Then prone to earth we bowed our pallid flowers,
And caught the drops divine; the purple dyes
Tinging the lustre of our native hue:

Nor summer gales, nor artconducted showers,
Have nursed our slender forms, but lovers' sighs
Have been our gales, and lovers' tears our dew.

March 22. St. Basil of Ancyra.
Narbonne. St. Lea, Widow.
St. Catherine of Sweden; V.

St. Paul, Bp. of
St. Deogratius.

Orises at v. 54'. sets at vi. 6'.

St. Catherine of Sweden was daughter of Ulpho the prince of Nericia in Sweden, by St. Bridget. She was very beautiful, but, in spite of her personal charms, was early placed in the Nunnery of Risberg, and there educated for a holy Vestal. She died abbess of Vatzen, in 1381.

FAUNA.The careful Ornithologist should prepare himself at this time for noting down the first appearance of our Summer Birds of Passage, which now begin to appear, and by their successive arrival, add daily to the number of the choral Songsters of our Groves. The following is

observations under their proper heads, designated by the mythological Deities, which were anciently supposed to preside over them: thus, FLORA designates the Botanical observations, and every thing relating to Flowers; FAUNA the Animals; POMONA the Fruits; CERES the Corn and Agriculture in general; what relates to the starry Heavens above the atmosphere, is designated by URANIA, &c. All this will be explained in the index to this Calendar. It has been found the shortest, as well as the most classical mode of heading the separate subjects recorded in the work. COELUM represents not only our sky, but all the atmospheric phenomena.