Of hazel, pendent o'er the plaintive streams,
They frame the first foundation of their domes :
Dry sprigs of trees, in artful fabric laid,
And bound with clay together."

Spring.

Gay, in his Rural Sports, among which, however, he has not included the pleasant one of nutting, slightly mentions the Hazel (as it is generally pictured by the poets), as growing by the margin of a brook :

"O lead me, guard me, from the sultry hours,
Hide me, ye forests, in your closest bowers,
Where the tall oak his spreading arms entwines,
And with the beech a mutual shade combines ;
Where flows the murmuring brook, inviting dreams:
Where bordering hazel overhangs the streams,
Whose rolling current, winding round and round,
With frequent falls makes all the woods resound."

Thomson gives a pretty picture on this subject:

"Ye swains, now hasten to the hazel bank,

Where down yon dale, the wildly winding brook
Falls hoarse from steep to steep. In close array,
Fit for the thickets and the tangling shrub,
Ye virgins come. For you their latest song
The woodlands raise; the clustering nuts for you
The lover finds amid the secret shade ;
And where they burnish on the topmost bough,
With active vigour crushes down the tree,
Or shakes them ripe from the resigning husk,—
A glossy shower, and of an ardent brown
As are the ringlets of Melinda's hair."

Autumn.

Wordsworth speaks with great delight of the pleasures

of nutting:

And o'er the pathless rocks I forced my way,
Until at length I came to one dear nook
Unvisited, where not a broken bough

Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign
Of devastation! but the hazels rose

Tall and erect, with milk-white clusters hung,
A virgin scene!-A little while I stood,
Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in; and with wise restraint,
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed

The banquet,-
-or beneath the trees I sate
Among the flowers, and with the flowers I played:

* Then up I rose,

And dragged to earth each branch and bough with crash,
And merciless ravage, and the shady nook

Of hazels, and the green and massy bower
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up
Their quiet being; and unless I now
Confound my present feelings with the past,

Even then when from the bower I turned away
Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings,

I felt a sense of pain when I beheld

The silent trees, and the intruding sky."

Gay, describing some of the innocent incantations of the shepherds, makes one of his ruddy damsels say—

"Two hazel nuts I threw into the flame,

And to each nut I gave a sweetheart's name;
This with the loudest bounce me sore amazed,
That in a flame of brightest colour blazed.
As blazed the nut so may thy passion grow:
For 'twas thy nut that did so brightly glow."

GAY'S Shepherd's Week

M

Chatterton compares

of a lady's hair:

the colour of the Filbert to that

"Browne as the fylberte droppyng from the shelle,

Browne as the nappy ale at Hocktyde game,

So browne the crokyde rynges, that featlie fell
Over the neck of the all beauteous dame."

Battle of Hastings.

The Hazel is well-known as a favourite haunt of the

squirrel :

Upon whose nutty top

A squirrel sits, and wants no other shade

Than what by his own spreading tail is made;
He culls the soundest, dext'rously picks out

The kernels sweet, and throws the shells about."

COWLEY.

We are told by Virgil, and Virgil is a great authority, that the Hazel has been more honoured than the vine, the myrtle, or the bay itself:

66

Populus Alcidæ, gratissima vitis Iaccho

Formosa myrtus Veneri, sua laurea Phoebo;
Phyllis amat corylos; illas dum Phyllis amabit,
Nec myrtus vincet corylos, nec laurea Phobi."
Eclogue vii.

Rendered by Dryden :

“The poplar is by great Alcides worn ;
The brows of Phoebus his own bays adorn;
The branching vine the jolly Bacchus loves:
The Cyprian queen delights in myrtle groves ;
With hazel Phyllis crowns her flowing hair;
And while she loves that common wreath to wear,

Nor bays, nor myrtle boughs with hazel shall compare."

There is one great virtue in the Hazel-nut, which we have pleasure in making known to our readers. It is true

that taste differs with regard to personal beauty as in all things else; and in the colour of the eye, as in other beauties of person: some authors, indeed, have lauded the grey eye; Chaucer appears to prefer this colour; but poets in general are divided between the blue and the black. We are sorry we cannot give our readers a recipe to turn the eye blue; but to those fond mothers who admire black, and have mourned over the grey eyes of their infant children, we recommend to burn to ashes the shells of hazel-nuts, and to apply them to the hinder part of the head of the grey-eyed child. Tradition, who is aged, and should have experience, affirms that they will change the eyes from grey to black.

ILICIDE E.

HOLLY BUSH.

ILEX.

TETRANDRIA TETRAGYNIA.

French, le houx, le grand housson, l'agron, le grand pardon, bois franc; Italian, agrifoglio, alloro spinoso; English, holly, holme, or hulver.

THE Common Holly, Ilex aquifolium, at full growth, is generally from twenty to thirty feet high; yet it is sometimes seen as high as sixty feet. The general appearance of this tree is well known. When the Holly grows naturally, and is old, the upper part of the tree is clothed with entire leaves, without thorns, only ending in a sharp point. The flowers, which are of a dingy white, appear in May, in clusters of three, four, or five, and are succeeded by roundish berries, which, about Michaelmas, turn to a beautiful scarlet; and these, when not eaten by the birds, will hang on great part of the winter.

The Holly is a native of this country, and many other parts of Europe, of North America, Japan, CochinChina, &c.

"It grows so spontaneously in this part of Surrey," says Evelyn, "that the large vale near my own dwelling was anciently called Holmesdale. In Dungeness, in Kent, it grows even among the pebbles on the beach."

The Holly should be in every shrubbery or plantation, for the beauty of its shining evergreen leaves, and of its scarlet berries, will still remain when little vegetation is to be seen and if a few of the best varieties of variegated