A NOVEMBER NIGHT 



field-glasses bring a host of new worlds into sight. 

 The flocked Pleiades, seen through the glass, glow 

 intenser than the brightest star in the firmament 

 watched with the naked eye, intenser than white 

 Capella or restless Lyra at its bluest-brightest ; and 

 instead of seven Pleiades there are now nearer 

 seventy in a marvellous cluster of spheres. Jupiter, 

 whose ordinary feature is steady glow rather than 

 diamond flash, appears in the colours of the prism, 

 and the great nebula in Orion is seen distinctly, 

 though lifted as yet so little above the horizon. 

 They make the early nights, the gemmed nights, of 

 November among the richest of the year, when the 

 air is free of cloud and earth mist. 



Song and Sex 



I cannot understand how anybody can watch 

 and listen to English birds for many years, and yet 

 hold that their songs are always connected with 

 courtship and rivalry. Spring, when the sex passion 

 burns intense, produces more melody and finer than 

 other seasons ; it would do so even if its volume 

 were not swelled by the songs of millions of warblers 

 which are absent from England in autumn and 

 winter. But when we observe and listen carefully 

 during autumn and winter, we find that there is 

 really a great deal of bird music which does not 

 spring from sexual motive. 



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