56 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. 
descending on the length of the road before him, they cov- 
ered it and the fences completely with black: when they 
again rose, and after a few evolutions descended on the 
skirts of the high-timbered woods, they produced a most 
singular and striking effect. Whole trees, for a considerable 
extent, from the top to the lowest branches, seemed as if 
hung ‘with mourning. Their notes and screaming, he adds, 
seemed all the while like the distant sounds of a great cata- 
ract, but in a musical cadence. ‘This is a scene which may 
be paralleled every autumn in the grain districts of the. 
West and South. 
