A correspondent sends us the following : "In the southern counties of England there is a familiar proverb :

'A Cherry year a merry year; A plum year a dumb year.'

Which is explained in the Journal of Horticulture, to mean, that 'cherries are never plentiful' except when their blossoms have a genial spring and summer, and that an abundance of plums carries an increase in the death rate.' In the Westminster Review for January, 1881, may be found a more ingenious, if not more plausible, explanation. The word 'merry' according to this authority, has nothing whatever to do with our adjective so spelt, but is connected with the French merise, and is a common provincialism throughout the south-west of England, for the wild cherry (Prunus Avium). In Hampshire, 'cherry feasts' are still held. The learned authors of ' English Plant Names,' further remark that there are various kinds of 'merries,' known as red, black and white, in different parts of England. The word 'dumb' has also nothing to do with the adjective so spelt, but is a corruption of 'damson' (Prunus communis). The meaning of the rhyme now becomes apparent. It simply says that a good year for cherries is also a good year for 'merries,' and that a good year for plums, (always spelt 'plumb' by the rustic of the west of England, and so making a purer rhyme,) is also a good year for damsons; that, in short, the year which is favorable to cultivated is also favorable to wild fruit".

[This explanation shows how scholastic acquirements may run away with one. Plum is not written "plumb" by the rustics of the west of England. When the said "rustics" write of the mason's instrument, the plumb-line, they write it "plum-line." It is the scholarly people who write "plumb-line," that write "plumb," when referring to a plum tree, and because they think the piece of lead that is shaped like a plum, was so called from the resemblance, and not from plumbago; that is, lead.

It is perfectly true that Merry is used in many parts of the west of England by the " rustics," as the name of a cherry. It is a very small black variety of cherry, cultivated, and often found nearly like it wild. It is very sweet, rather more so than the average of cultivated cherries. The name, Merry, is not applied to inferior forms of the cherry when wild, nor to any form but this black one. Although it is the general opinion with scholars that "Merry" is derived from the French cerise, it is but a shrewd guess, and the writer takes no "stock" in it.

At any rate the relation of the Merry to the cherry is so close that what affects one would affect the other, and the dumb with the plum so violent, that few will value the interpretation of the Westminster.

The interpretation we should give of the rhymes would be, that a year favorable to a good cherry crop, would be favorable to good health, to merri-ness; and a good plum year, unfavorable, cold and dumb in death].