summer, as their
pasture is the rich herbage of the forest. It is taken off during the
winter, and its first sounds now tell us, although the days are cold,
and the snow not yet gone, that brighter times are coming. The clear
concerts of the frogs ring loudly out from marsh and lake, and at this
season alone is heard the lay of the wood-robin, and the blackbird. The
green glossy leaves of the winter green, whose bright scarlet berries
look like clusters of coral on the snow, now seem even brighter than
they were--the blue violet rises among the sheltered moss by the old
tree roots, and the broad-leaved adder tongue gives out its orange and
purple blossoms to gladden the brown earth, while the trees are yet all
black and barren, save the various species of pine and spruce, which now
wear a fringe of softer green. The May flowers of New Brunswick seldom
blossom till June, which is rather an Irish thing of them to do, and
although the weather has been fine, and recalls to the memory the balmy
breath of May, yet I have often seen a pearly wreath of new fallen snow,
deck the threshhold on that 'merrie morn'. After the evaporation of the
steaming vapour of spring has gone forward, and the farmer has operated
in the way of ploughing and sowing, on whatever ready-prepared land he
may have for the purpose, the first dry "_spell_" is looked forward to
most anxiously to burn off the land which has been chopped during the
winter--it is bad policy, however, to depend for the whole crop on this
"_spring burn_," as a long continuance of wet weather may prevent it.
The new settler, on his first season, has nothing else to depend upon;
but the older ones chop the land at intervals during the summer, and
clear it off in the autumn, and thus have it ready for the ensuing
spring. Burning a chopping, or _fallow_, as it is called, of twelve or
fourteen acres in extent, is a grand and even awful sight: rushing in
torrents of flame, it rolls with the wind, crackling and roaring through
the brushwood, and often extending beyond the limits assigned it,
catching the dry stems of ancient trees, the growth of the earlier ages
of this continent, which lie in gigantic ruins, half buried in the
rising soil, and which will be themes of speculation to the geologists
of other days--it rushes madly among the standing trees of the woods,
wreathing them to their summits in its wild embrace--they stand at night
like lofty torches, or a park decked out with fes