OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 151 



brued field and wood a golden glory — to sally forth and listen to the 

 delicious twittering of the sky-lark, as the love-prompted strain grad- 

 ually dies away with the rising of the little songster over head, " to 

 the last point of vision and beyond," is a pleasure we can hardly 

 experience in this central portion of the rich Valley of the great 

 "Father of Waters." Spring, with us, is apt to be but a narrow leap 

 from winter to summer, while the dread of malaria too often out- 

 weighs what other inducements to an early stroll, our more chilly 

 and heavily-dewed mornings may possess. Nor will the bright col- 

 ors of our birds and flowers fully compensate for the enchanting song 

 and sweet fragrance of those which add to the sylvan attractions of 

 the more southern portions of England and the Continent of Europe. 

 Our^summer's intenser rays distill and draw away, through the limbec 

 of our tree-clad hills, much of the inspiring incense which dwells in 

 folded leaf and dewy cup about the forest there ; while our wood- 

 ticks, ''jiggers," mosquitos and other tormenters, do not help the com- 

 parison in respect of personal comfort. Neither can we sit in pro- 

 longed twilight and listen to the rich volubility of the nightingale — 

 that best of concerters : our twilight's but a word ; we lack the mock- 

 ing-bird, and fain must make the most of Whip-poor-will. But in 

 autumn, when the leaves are turned by the interpenetrating and all- 

 pervading touch of the Great Artist, who paints without brush, the 

 American may read and enjoy the Book of Nature to most advantage, 

 and need envy no one on any other part of our terraqueous globe. 

 Then are the solar rays tempered by a dreamy, cloudless atmosphere 

 all his own, for ''a gauzy nebula films the pensive sky," and wakes 

 the emotion expressed in Tennyson's precious lines : 



Tears, idle tears, 1 know not what they mean — 

 Tears from the depth of some divine despair 

 Kise in the heart and gather to the eyes, 

 In looking on the happy autumn fields, 

 And thinking on the days that ai-e no more. 



Then do grass and wood resound with song — not so much of fea- 

 thered tribes as of insect tribes, and especially of the Katydids, green 

 vaulters from leaf to leaf and from branch to branch — essentially 

 American. The song of these entomological choristers may not com- 

 pare in melody with that of the ornithological warblers; but though, 

 it grate at times, it has a merriness all its own, and, as it comes from 

 bough or spear, can never be unpleasant, for there is no sadness in 

 the earth's minstrelsy. 



Some persons are easier wooed to sleep by the dull rumbling of a 

 city's streets than by the autumnal voices of the woods ; while other s,. 



