



' 



NATURE IN SEPTEMBER. 



ALAS the Summer is on the wane. A courageous Wren or 

 Robin may utter a few notes, but all our Summer visitors 

 will soon be harboured in far distant climes. Still, those who 

 delight in country pursuits and studies can always find some- 

 thing to interest and amuse all the year round, as my various 

 monthly essays shew, and even now we have some few beautiful 

 weeks left before the fading light of Autumn has entirely 

 flickered out. 



One reason I like September is because my Robin has 

 returned to the garden and enlivens the place from early morn 

 to dewy eve with its sweet music. I suppose he raises his 

 brood in some grassy bank not far distant, and now that family 

 cares are over he has joined me again for a few months stay. 



This year he reappeared for the first time towards the end of 

 August, and he never looked better or brighter in plumage. 

 Perched on my garden fence only yesterday he was a picture 

 in his breast of red, and ashy and brown plumage. I sat for 

 an hour watching, whistling, and talking to him, and he answered 

 my caresses in such sweet strains that I feel more endeared 

 than ever to the dapper little fellow. He has four sets of music 

 at this season ; one is a hissing note, another like the slow 

 unwinding of a fisherman's winch, the third is the ordinary song 

 somewhat melancholy but beautifully mellow and musiqal and 

 lastly he utters an extremely faint but pleasing warble which 

 might easily deceive the well trained ear of the Naturalist if 

 the bird Was not seen. 



Talking' of sights and sounds in my garden reminds me 

 that the Sparrows" have been catching the Green Cabbage Cater-! 

 pillars by the dozen. It has amused arid interested me to 

 see them hawking over the tops of the cabbages, then dart- 

 ing in under the leaves and coming out with a giant devas- 

 tator in the beak. The impudent rascal chirps as he alights 



