STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 41 



the larger jar; and when to these a pocket lens is 

 added, our equipment is complete. 



As we emerge upon the common and tread its 

 springy heather, what a wild wind dashes the hair 

 into our eyes, and the blood into our cheeks ! and 

 what a fine sweep of horizon lies before us ! The 

 lingering splendors and the beautiful decays of au- 

 tumn vary the scene, and touch it with a certain 

 pensive charm. The ferns mingle harmoniously 

 their rich browns with the dark green of the furze, 

 now robbed of its golden summer glory, but still 

 pleasant to the eye and exquisite to memory. The 

 gaunt wind-mill on the rising ground is stretching 

 its stiff, starred arms into the silent air, a land- 

 mark for the wanderer a land-mark, too, for the 

 wandering mind, since it serves to recall the dim 

 early feelings and sweet broken associations of a 

 childhood when we gazed at it with awe, and listen- 

 ed to the rushing of its mighty arms. Ah ! well 

 may the mind with the sweet insistance of sadness 

 linger on those scenes of the irrecoverable past, and 

 try, by lingering there, to feel that it is not wholly 

 lost, wholly irrecoverable, vanished forever from the 

 Life which, as these decays of autumn and these 

 changing trees too feelingly remind us, is gliding 

 away, leaving our cherished ambitions still unful- 

 filled, and our deeper affections still but half ex-, 

 pressed. The vanishing visions of elapsing life 

 bring with them thoughts which lie too deep for 

 tears, and this wind-mill recalls such visions by 



