Sporting Almanack and Oracle of Rural Life Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1842 Excerpt: ...now approaching, which preserve the recollection of olden time. The first one celehrated is the advent of our Lord, and the nearest Sunday to this time is called Advent Sunday, happening this year on the 27th. Evergreens.--Though the least pleasant sight connected with the coming on of winter in this month is to see the leaves, that have so gladdened the groves all the summer long, falling everywhere around us, withered and dead, --that sight is accompanied hy another which is too often overlooked. Though most of the leaves fall in winter, and the stems and hranches which they heautified stand hare, many of them remain all the year round, and look hrighter and fresher now than they did in spring, in virtue of the contrasts that are everywhere ahout them. Indeed, the cultivation of Evergreens has hecome so general with us of late years, that the home enclosures ahout our country dwellings, from the proudest down to even the poorest, are seldom to he seen without a plentiful supply, which we now, in this month, first hegin to ohserve, and acknowledge the value of. It must he a poor plot of garden-ground, indeed, that does not now hoast its clumps of Winterhlowing Laurus: in-s; its trim Holly-hushes, hright with their scarlet herries; or its tall Spruce Firs, shooting up their pyramid of feathery hranches heside the low, ivy-grown porch. Of this last-named profuse ornamenter of whatever is permitted to afford it support (the Ivy), we now, too, everywhere perceive the heautifully picturesque effects: though there is one effect of it, also perceived ahout this time, which I cannot persuade myself to he reconciled to: I mean where the trunk of a tall tree is hound ahout with Ivy almost to its top, which during the summer has scarcely heen distinguished as a se.