no By Leafy Ways. 



motionless in the voiceless woods, as if waiting for 

 their fall. 



The air is crowded with innumerable insects. 

 Gnats in cloudy columns short-lived children of the 

 autumn rise like phantoms from the river-path. 

 Millions of ephemera spend in the twilight their brief 

 span of life born after sundown, dying ere the 

 dawn. 



Hosts of dusky moths hover round the lingering 

 flowers. 



The. hush of night grows deeper as the grasshopper 

 chirps at intervals his drowsy strain. 



But careless of the noonday warmth, and not 

 tempted by the store of insect life, the swallows 

 knowing perhaps by bitter experience how suddenly 

 the food supply may fail, prompted by some myste- 

 rious sense of coming winter have all, except a few 

 stragglers, left us even earlier than usual. Even in 

 August the movement began. No later than the 

 middle of the month vast flights of swallows collected 

 and started on their journey. 



Led by no skilful pilot not even guided by pre- 

 vious knowledge they gained their first experience, 

 for the young birds of the year, strange as it may 

 seem, went first. The parents followed with their 

 second broods. 



Some stragglers still remain, who, here to-day and 

 gone to-morrow, hurry southward in the track of the 

 legions. 



