year. Whatever your roving fancies may say, there is a virtue in constancy which has a reward above all that fickle change can bestow, giving strength and purity to every affection of life, and even throwing additional grace about the flowers which bloom in our native fields. We admire the strange and brilliant plant of the green-house, but we love most the simple flowers we have loved of old, which have bloomed many a spring, through rain and sunshine, on our native soil.
Radishes from the hot-beds to-day.
Thursday, 21th.—A flock of the rusty black-bird or grakles about the village; they have been roving to and fro several days. We generally see these birds for a short time in autumn and spring, but they do not remain here. They move in flocks, and attract attention whenever they are in the neighborhood, by perching together on some tree. Half those now here are brown; both the females and the younger males being of this color: there is a great difference, also, between the males and females, as regards size.
All kinds of black-birds are rare here; they are said to have been very numerous indeed at the settlement of the country, but have very much diminished in numbers of late years. And yet, they are still very common in some of the oldest parts of the country, where they are a very great annoyance to the farmers. These rusty grakles are northern birds; the common black-bird, occasionally seen here in small parties, comes from the south. The red wing black-bird or starling, we have never seen in this county; it may possibly be found here, but certainly is not so common as elsewhere. Nor is the cow-bunting often seen with us; and as all these birds are more or less gregarious, they
