108 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, 

 That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed 

 silent to listen. 



For twenty years or more Maurice Thompson 

 made a special study of this song-leader among 

 American birds, in its southern haunts, and in the 

 extensive literature that had been devoted to it. 



In the fields one can see mounds of fresh, soft, 

 dark earth cast up by the still busy little moles. 

 Along the country roads north of town, the crickets 

 still sing in feeble voice, and a few purple asters 

 bloom yet among the grasses. The familiar snow- 

 birds dash about the shrubbery. Men with teams 

 were gathering corn, and the golfers lingered in 

 the pasture course as the darkness was falling. 

 The sunset was of short duration, but showed the 

 crimson coloring befitting the season. 



Laivrence, Kansas, October 31, 1906. 

 A Grinnell newspaper reports that for ten days 

 or so men have been hunting mud turtles along 

 the nearby sloughs and creeks, for the city mar- 

 kets of the east. About seven hundred and fifty 

 pounds have been taken from Poweshiek County 

 streams, the average weight being five or six 

 pounds, and the maximum (so far as reported) 

 about thirteen. One would hardly consider the 

 prairie wolf or the woodchuck '^game" in the or- 

 dinary sense ; these turtles might perhaps be add- 



