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Show IN THE HAYFIELDS. There the Artist Finns SkoUhe Deiignd hy -Mistress Nature. "St. Barnabas, mow the prass," is an ! old country saying-; hut, although St. j Uarnabas' day falls when the meadows ; are generally ripe fvr mowing, there is no crop so "tickle," as the Yorkshire farmers say, as the time at which it must be cut. Hay must fall when the grasses are iu flower. Walk into a hay-held hay-held iu the second week iu June, says an English review, and you will see the pollen dropping from the fescue and timothy, and the yellow from the buttercups but-tercups lodges on your boots. Then the I beauty of a good meatlow can be seen and understood. The trefoil and yel- j low suckling are ankle deep, and a little above rises the perennial red ' clover the white being uot yet in full ; blossom. The true grasses reach to ' the knee, the growth becoming less dense as it rises higher, and the crowu-ing crowu-ing glory of beauty is the wild-eyed ox i dairies more dear, however, to the artist than to the farmer. Dotted ! among the grasses are carmine meadow ' veching and a dozen other small le- ! guminosae, yellow weasel snout, but- tercups and wild blue geranium. In a strangely beautiful picture of Durer's which we once saw the artist had evi- : dently painted the section of a hay- ! field. One seemed to be lying on the ! cut grass and looking at the wall left I after the last sweep of the scythe. Every flower, every stalk of grass was painted, the white daisies filling the top of the canvas. Not only sight hut scent is needed to judge the maturity of the crop. In a walk through acres of "mowing grass" to determine the condition of the blossom, the fragrance of the odors from the almost invisible tlowers of the grasses and of the tiny clovers, crowsfoot and trefoil that "blush unseen" in the thick growth at the bottom is almost stupefying, and is certain in some cases to bring on a violent attack of hay fever at night. If the flower is fully out, then the hay mut be cut, no matter how threatening threaten-ing the weather, and no crop lies so completely at the mercy of the skies as does the hay. If the crop be short it cannot then be left to grow. The grass must fall while the blossom is upon it or the cattle will not eat it. "Better let it spoil on the ground than spoil as it grows" is a country axiom. For the latter is a certain loss, and a day's bright sun and wind may always dry a fallen crop. . , tj - - A Great Snake Story. " In Marianne North's "Recollections of a Happy Life" is a description of a j tame snake. Its mistress would sometimes some-times twist the creature in the great j plait of hair she wore around her head. I and once threatened to go down, thus ! aristocratic people. One of 'the snake's ! own eccentricities serves to disting-uiibj it among all other reptiles of a similar nature which have served as pets. It was as fond of glittering things as its mistress, and when she took off her many rings and placed them on different differ-ent parts of the table it would go about collecting them and stringing them on its body. It would then tie itself in a knot, so that the rings could not ha a!;r-:i c,:r until it was pl.-.i ;e 1 l) j |