AUTUMNAL MOVEMENTS. 197 



in spring, they had hailed, with joyous carols, the approach 

 of summer. 



With October the stir and bustle increases. Summer birds 

 depart, winter ones arrive, and, as leaves fall faster and faster, 

 numberless insects, deprived of their fugacious protection, 

 hasten to betake themselves to more abiding shelter. The 

 beetle-tribe especially are busy in search of such convenient 

 retreats as stones, or holes in walls, or crevices in bark afford 

 them, while flies and a few winter-during butterflies resort to 

 close quarters in the ivy. 



Throughout October, the face of nature is usually sunny 

 and joyous, as well as active ; yet is there a something in all 

 its stir and bustle like the busy preparations of dear friends 

 about to leave us on a long absence ; and as now, in November, 

 these autumnal activities are drawing to a close, the dull sense 

 of parting presses on our spirits with the falling year. 



Thus, at least, it sometimes should and must be, where the 

 heart is open to the impressions and the ear awake to the 

 voices of the seasons, which are all of them appointed preachers 

 Autumn the most emphatic of the four. But what the efficacy 

 of their moral missions, if in arousing thought they arouse 

 not to action also ? 



Hardly, indeed, can one take note of the preparatory move- 

 ments of so many divinely- guided creatures in their pursuit, 

 now, of asylums for the coming winter, without being led to 

 ask ourselves, if we, the children of reason, are as wise in our 



VOL. III. N 



