AUTUMN. 



255 



But though the autumn is the time when the regu- 

 lar vegetation, which buds in the spring and prepares 

 its flowers and seeds during the summer, begins to 

 suspend its action, so that it may, in repose, pass the 

 winter uninjured ; yet the autumn has a vegetation 

 which may be considered as more peculiarly its own, 

 a comparatively short-lived vegetation, which begins 

 and ends with the season, and of which even the ves- 

 tiges are in general gone before the winter. Allusion 

 is not here made to the artificial productions of the 

 garden, many of which are finer, both in their forms 

 and their colours, in autumn than in the strength of 

 the summer's heat, but to the productions of wild na- 

 ture, which have no human hand to tend, and in many 

 instances no human eye to heed them. The proper wild 

 crop of the autumn, which appear in forest, field, and 

 wild, coming one sees not whence, springing up with 

 vast rapidity, generally melting in the rain, and leav- 

 ing hardly a trace behind, are leafless and flowerless 

 plants the fungi, in all their varieties of size, form, 

 and habit. No doubt some of them make their ap- 

 pearance at other times, and they subsist upon animal 

 matters as well as upon vegetable, but never upon 

 matter of any kind till it has ceased to live, and cor- 

 ruption, in some of its forms, has begun to work upon 

 it. It seems, indeed, that corruption is the only nidus 

 in which the spores of this singular race can come to 

 life ; and as many of the species are microscopic 

 when developed to the extent of their growth, we 

 need not wonder that the germs exist in places to 

 which we can discover no visible entrance. 



It is in the autumn that they appear in their my- 

 riads on fields, on the bark of trees, on stems, on 

 leaves, on heaps of rubbish, in humid places, and in 

 places which are comparatively dry, but never wholly 

 immersed in the water, as water dissolves their flimsy 

 organisation. The whole race are feeders upon the 

 refuse which the rest of nature has cast oft' in the 

 course of the season of action. Many of them are 

 offensive to look on, a very considerable number ate 

 poisonous to man, and still more are suspicious ; yet 

 there are insects and other small animals to whom 

 even the most offensive of them appear to be wel- 

 come. What general purpose they answer is not ac- 

 curately known, and it would be foreign to the objec 

 of this article to inquire. But their numbers are suf- 

 ficient to show that it must be one of general import- 

 ance ; and as the time of their life is that of the de- 

 cay and death of the seasonal part of living nature, i 

 may perhaps be conjectured that they in some wai 

 work up and prepare the waste, so that it may serve 

 better for running the course of life anew. We 

 luive to do with them only, however, as forming a 

 character of the autumnal season ; but more minut< 

 accounts will be found under the names of the prin 

 cipal groups and the more remarkable genera. 



As the autumn advances, thousands of little crea 

 tures are busy in storing an endless variety of sub 

 stances with the germs of life, all so placed an< 

 provided as that they shall pass the average winte 

 uninjured, and find the proper nidus for their deve 

 lopment and the proper food for their growth ant 

 support, when the returning energies of the young 

 year shall call them to activity. Others which coul 

 not bear the weather or find the proper food, hid 

 themselves beyond the reach of danger, and seal u 

 their dwellings till the time, of revival comes. Ther 

 are also some which appear to get a new econom 

 for making the autumnal preparation ; some race 



hich have been all females for many successive ge- 

 erations during the summer, and have been, race 

 fter race, produced alive, or at least so near it, that 

 ley attained the size of maturity in a portion of a 

 ay, appear as male and females for the production 

 f those eggs which are to subsist during the winter, 

 nd continue the race of their own organic energy, 

 or ten or twelve generations, as before. This, which 

 s well authenticated, is one of the most singular facts 

 [i the whole animal economy, and puts one in mind 

 'f what is alleged of some fruit trees, that they can 

 >e continued for a certain time by the graft in the 

 >ud, but ultimately die out, if they are not renewed 

 y a return to the seedling. The whole of the pre- 

 laration which is made for the surviving of the winter 

 >y the progeny of those creatures which are unable 

 o bear its rigours themselves, are among the most 

 mrious points in the whole curious field of zoology. 



The spiders are a race whose habits are peculiarly 

 worthy of study in the autumn, which is with them 

 he grand season of bustle and activity, in house, 

 jarden and field ; and taken on the whole, they 

 are highly useful to man. There is no species which 

 ommits depredations on any thing useful ; for though 

 we often hear of the injury done to fruit trees by 

 ' the red spider," the red spider is not a spider of 

 any sort, but a species of coccus. The whole of the 

 spiders, without one known exception, feed upon 

 animal substances ; they almost universally kill their 

 own prey ; and the whole of that prey is in some 

 respects either injurious or annoying to man. In its 

 feeding, the common house fly is, indeed, perhaps 

 more useful than injurious, because it is a sort of 

 scavenger in its way, and consumes matters, the 

 accumulation of which would be offensive. But its 

 familiarity and its numbers render it troublesome ; 

 and, in autumn, it often becomes a nuisance. Many 

 insects get active at the time of preparing for the 

 winter ; but the house-fly gets languid, and in houses 

 which are surrounded by rank vegetation, and where 

 matters are conducted in a slovenly manner, it so 

 throngs them as to be a pest. Now this insect is a 

 favourite food both with the house and the garden 

 spiders, and they set snares for it, in all places where 

 it has a chance of passing ; and the eggs of the fly 

 are so numerous, and deposited in places where they 

 are so safe from injury, that if the spiders were not 

 to cut off tens of thousands, the flies would multiply 

 till they became an absolute plague. In the gardens 

 they snare many other races ; and they do so when 

 these are ranging about and depositing their eggs in 

 places where the caterpillars, or larva?, would gene- 

 rally, in some shape or other, be hurtful to vegetation. 

 The beauty of the web, especially that of the large 

 garden spider, the skill with which it is placed, always 

 in what may be considered as an insect thoroughfare, 

 presenting its meshes in the very line of the insect 

 passage, and being proof against a considerable 

 degree of wind and rain, the industry with which it is 

 repaired when torn, or replaced when any part be- 

 comes too dry in its consistency, are all perfectly 

 admirable. This is not the place for entering upon 

 the details, as these will be found under the names 

 of the creatures themselves ; but it is impossible to 

 avoid remarking that if there were no creatures pre- 

 paring for the winter but the garden spider, there 

 would still be an ample field for observation. Sus- 

 pended in its central snot, with the head downwards, 

 which gives the animal the advantage of the impetus 



