292 THE MAGAZINE OF HORTICULTURE. 



Sometimes, for several minutes, hardly a voice from any 

 creature is heard : and the rustling of the night-wind through 

 the tremulous leaves of the birch, or its moaning among the 

 high branches of the pines, resembling the murmurs of dis- 

 tant waters, are the only sounds that meet the ear. But this 

 dreary stillness is not of long duration. The droning flight 

 of the beetle, and the whirring of various kinds of moths 

 that are busy among the foliage of the trees, are the accom- 

 paniments of a summer night, suggesting to the fancy the 

 passing of a ghost, and filling the mind with many mysteri- 

 ous conjectures. Sometimes the owl, on his soft silken wings, 

 glides along with stealthy and noiseless flight ; and we are 

 soon startled by his peculiar hooting — a sound which I can 

 imagine must be terrific to the smaller inhabitants of the 

 wood. 



At midnight, in general, the stillness of the winds is greater 

 than in the day-time, and the gurgling of streams is heard 

 more distinctly amid the general hush of nature. Sounds 

 are now the most prominent objects of attention ; and every 

 noise from distant places booms distinctly over the plains and 

 hollows. We are aff"ected with a superstitious feeling, in a 

 lonely place at night, that disposes us to listen with breathless 

 atterition to every sound we cannot immediately explain. A 

 morbid sensibility thus awakened is the cause of that pleas- 

 ure which is felt by most persons under similar circumstan- 

 ces. It leads the youthful and the bold to seek midnight ad- 

 venture, and the more timid to trust themselves to those am- 

 biguous situations, where, though no danger awaits them, the 

 silence and darkness and mystery produce a state of the 

 mind that borders on ecstacy, and which may be considered 

 the usual mental condition of the religious devotee. 



While pursuing our midnight contemplations, occasionally, 

 during an interval of silence, the night-jar, as he flies invisi- 

 bly over our head,* twangs his wings on a sudden de- 

 scent through the air in pursuit of his aerial prey, making a 

 sound that to the superstitious, who are unacquainted with 



* This sound is said to be produced by the open mouth of the bird, as he darts swiftly 

 tlirough the air in oursuit of an insect 



