192 GLEANINGS FROM NATUHE. 



families flock about and, with varied notes of alarm, 

 evince an interest in and a sympathy for the woes of 

 their unfortunate companion of the woods. 

 From mid-August to October 



The ceaseless hum of insect life goes ever on, 

 No pause for night or morn or noon-day sun. 



After the first frosts, however, these insect sounds 

 grow gradually less until November, when they almost 

 wholly disappear. On this day the chirp of a wayside 

 cricket, the crackling note of 'a clouded grasshopper, 

 made by the male while on the wing, the drawling 

 call of a harvest -fly which had long out-lived its day, 

 and the feeble shrill of two or three small species of 

 katydids were the only insect notes which were heard. 



Even they were only 

 occasional weak wails 

 woe begotten sounds 

 of frost-bitten individ- 

 uals and not the loud 

 shrill notes of the 



Fig. 40-A small Katydid. (After Lugger.) Same Species of a fort- 

 Scudderia furcata Brunner. 



demanded tribute in the form of ceaseless song and 

 all went merry as a marriage bell. 



Where a barbed-wire fence stretched across the bed 

 of the canal a novel sight came into view. Hundreds, 

 yes thousands, of strands of spider 



erS 



oi s * webs were floating from the sides of 

 Balloonist*. 



the posts and wires. Ihe wind was 



from the south and they were blown northward, the 

 free ends floating horizontally and parallel in the air. 



