{image: historiated initial letter 'T', showing bird on nest with eggs.}

THE QUARTER.—The opening of buds and bursting into leaf of plants, under the influence of
April suns and showers, the sprouting of seeds, the return of many animals, and the renewed
songs of the birds, make spring-time wonderful. For this year we must be content to show,
in what way the warm sunshine and the rain are made the messengers of Heaven to the trees,
that have been fixed in a sleep like death the winter through, and at their touch awaken.

In the leafless plant during the winter all those forces from which change and growth result,
evenly balanced, are at perfect rest. It had been left in the preceding autumn dotted with
small hard buds containing nutriment, stored up in the form of insoluble secretions, as fixed
oil and starch; together with some watery juices that could in no manner act upon them.
This store within each bud was left carefully sealed up with little scales coated with down or
resin, so that hurt by frost or evaporation during winter was made scarcely possible. But there is no
protection against the sustained and genial warmth that comes with the spring rain. The outer coat of
resin yields, insoluble secretions in the bud are chemically decomposed, suffer a kind of ferment, and out
of starch and oil make dextrine (a sort of gum) and sugar; these are dissolved forthwith by the watery juices,
and the contents of the little buds covering the branches of the tree are thus transformed by warmth and moisture
into mucilage and syrup, while there lies at the same time, thanks to the showers that have sunk down through
the loosened soil, light rain-water against the sponge-like ends of all the roots. What follows then depends upon a
law of nature, which, in spite of its ungainly name, Endosmose and Exosmose, is very beautiful and simple.

If you separate by any tissue from a plant or animal two fluids, of which one is thicker—more treacley—than
the other, they will not remain apart: they will run through to each other, but in different proportions; a little of
the thicker fluid will go to the thinner, but there will be a much greater flow through the same tissue of the thin
fluid towards the thick. Cherry brandy is made by putting cherries which contain a syrupy juice within a vegetable
tissue (the skin), into a fluid much thinner than cherry juice. The consequence is, that a little of the cherry juice
flows outward through the skin into the brandy (that is Exosmose), and a great deal of the brandy flows (by
Endos­mose) through the skin into the cherry. The cherry swells accordingly, as everybody knows.
{continued at top of following page}

{image: decorative border around table, showing catkins, flowers, primroses, butterflies.}

CHRONICLE OF PROGRESS.—In the Days of the Saints.—St. Muchuo and St. Colum Cill lived in the
same age, and (as a MS. of some credit, though of small importance, relates) when Muchuo, who was likewise
known by the name of Mac Duach, was retired into the wilderness for the benefit of his devotion, he had no living
creatures about him. except a cock, a mouse, and a fly. The use of thc cock was to give him notice of the time of
night by his crowing, that he might know when to apply himself to his prayers; the mouse, it seems, had his proper
office, which was to prevent the saint from sleeping above five hours in the space of twenty-four; for when the
business of his devotion, which he exercised with great reverence and regularity upon his knees, had so fatigued his
spirits that they required a longer refreshment, and Muchuo was willing to indulge himself, the mouse would come
to his ears and scratch him with its feet, till he was perfectly awake: the fly always attended upon him when he was
reading; it had the sense, it seems, to walk along the lines of the book; and when the saint had tired his eyes,
and was willing to desist, the fly would stay upon the first letter of the next sentence, and by that means direct him
where he was to begin.—Keating's History of Ireland.

St. George and His Garter.—Joshua Barnes, B.D., in his History of Edward III., the founder of the English
Order of the Garter, argues that the riband of the garter is descended from the blue fillet tied by the Samothracians
around persons initiated into the mysteries of the Cabiri, by which they would be preserved from shipwreck. The
blue riband of the Garter, therefore, typifies the all-encircling sea, and St. George is the saint who takes the place of
the Cabiri: for, it is said, before his martyrdom
     "His hands he held up on high, adown he set his knee,
     Lord, he said. now grant this only thing I might see;
     Grant me, if it is thy will, that whoso in fair manere,
     Holds well my Day in Aperil, for my love on earth here;
     And whoso in Peril of Sea through me shall make his boon," &c.

On the Twenty-ninth of April, 1762, Cornelius Nepos waa published at Moscow, being the first classical book
printed in Russia.

On the Twenty-sixth of April, 1564, Shakespeare was baptised; he was born, it is thought, on the twenty-third.

A Hundred Years Ago.—APRIL, 1756.—On THE
FIRST, the king, in reply to an address from Lords
and Commons, said, "As both Houses desire that a
body of my German troops should be brought over hither
to assist in the defence of the kingdom in the present
critical conjuncture, I will give immediate orders for
that purpose." On THE FIFTH, Admirals Byng and West
sailed with a fleet ill fitted out from Portsmouth. Express
after express from competent authorities had warned the
government of danger threatened to Minorca by the Toulon
fleet. Only when informed that the French squadron
was equipped did the ministers send out Admiral Byng
with ten ships of the line, ill fitted and manned. He
had to cross the Bay of Biscay, call at Gibraltar, and
{continued at foot of following page}