270 SEPTEMBER. 



wild produce, crabs, black glossy clusters of privet, 

 buckthorn, and elderberries which furnish the farmer 

 with a cordial cup on his return from market on a 

 winter's eve, and blackberries, reminding us of the 

 Babes in the Wood. 



Their little hands and pretty lips 



With blackberries were dyed ; 

 And when they saw the darksome night, 



They sat them down and cried. 



The hedgerows are also brightened with a pro- 

 fusion of scarlet berries of hips, haws, honeysuckles, 

 viburnum, and bryony. The fruit of the mountain- 

 ash, woody-nightshade, and wild-service is truly 

 beautiful ; nor are the violet-hued sloes and bullaces, 

 or the crimson, mossy excrescences of the wild rose- 

 tree, insignificant objects amid the autumnal splen- 

 dours of the waning year. 



Notwithstanding the decrease of the day, the 

 weather of this month is, for the most part, splen- 

 didly calm ; and nature, who knows the most 

 favourable moment to display all her works, has 

 now instructed the geometric spider to form its 

 radiated circle on every bush, and the gossamer 

 spider to hang its silken threads on every blade of 

 grass. We behold innumerable filaments glittering 

 with dew in the morning ; and sometimes, such is 

 the immense quantity of this secretion, that it may 

 be seen, floating in a profusion of tangled webs in 

 the air, and covering our clothes, as we walk in the 

 fields, as with cotton. These little creatures, the 



