TO THE SPRING.

    Welcome, gentle Stripling,
      Nature’s darling, thou—­
    With thy basket full of blossoms,
      A happy welcome now! 
    Aha!—­and thou returnest,
      Heartily we greet thee—­
    The loving and the fair one,
      Merrily we meet thee! 
    Think’st thou of my Maiden
      In thy heart of glee? 
    I love her yet the Maiden—­
      And the Maiden yet loves me! 
    For the Maiden, many a blossom
      I begg’d—­and not in vain;
    I came again, a-begging,
      And thou—­thou giv’st again: 
    Welcome, gentle stripling,
      Nature’s darling thou—­
    With thy basket full of blossoms,
      A happy welcome, now!

* * * * *

NATURAL HISTORY OF SALMON AND SEA-TROUT.

    [On the Growth of Grilse and Salmon.  By Mr Andrew Young,
    Invershin, Sutherlandshire. (Transactions of the Royal Society
    of Edinburgh.  Vol.  XV.  Part III.) Edinburgh, 1843.]

    [On the Growth and Migrations of the Sea-Trout of the Solway. 
    By Mr John Shaw, Drumlanrig. (Ibid.) Edinburgh, 1843.]

The salmon is undoubtedly the finest and most magnificent of our fresh-water fishes, or rather of those anadromous kinds which, in accordance with the succession of the seasons, seek alternately the briny sea and the “rivers of water.”  It is also the most important, both in a commercial and culinary point of view as well as the most highly prized by the angler as an object of exciting recreation.  Notwithstanding these and other long-continued claims upon our consideration, a knowledge of its natural history and habits has developed itself so slowly, that little or nothing was precisely ascertained till very recently regarding either its early state or its eventual changes.  The salmon-trout, in certain districts of almost equal value with the true salmon, was also but obscurely known to naturalists, most of whom, in truth, are too apt to satisfy themselves rather by the extension than the increase of knowledge.  They hand down to posterity, in their barren technicalities, a great deal of what is neither new nor true, even in relation to subjects which lie within the sphere of ordinary observation,—­to birds and beasts, which almost dwell among us, and give utterance, by articulate or intelligible sounds, to a vast variety of instinctive, and as it were explanatory emotions:—­what marvel, then, that they should so often fail to inform us of what we desire to know regarding the silent, because voiceless, inhabitants of the world of waters?