AN OCTOBER DIARY. 317 



of a flesh than vegetable diet, in spite of their anatomy; 

 but I was surprised to find large numbers of humble- 

 bees creeping over the ground, in and out among the 

 bones, reaching to where the dragon-flies could not go. 

 Tainted flesh, it would seem, has a host of admirers in 

 many orders of the animal kingdom. On moving some 

 of the loose bones I found beetles of several sorts, and 

 ants, white, black, and red, and at times disturbed whole 

 clouds of minute flies of no name known to me. What 

 a wealth of animal life to be found in so unsavory a 

 place ! Mice, bees, beetles, dragon-flies, and minute in- 

 sects by the million ; all feeding quietly on the shreds 

 of skin and tendons left by greedy vultures a month or 

 more ago. 



The threatening bank of dull gray clouds that all day 

 long had been lying along the Western horizon roused 

 itself to action an hour or more before sunset, and, over- 

 spreading the unflecked blue sky of the morning, prac- 

 tically closed the day. Without further warning it 

 rained, suddenly, steadily, penetratingly. The thickest 

 foliage could not ward it off, and the steady dripping 

 of dislodged raindrops was heard all through the woods 

 long after the shower had passed by. Without a fare- 

 well ray to gild the tree-tops on the eastern slopes, the 

 sun went down, and a gloomy night followed what so 

 lately had been a rare, ripe autumn day, full to the brim 

 w'ith all of October's glories. 



Gloomy out-of-doors, but none the less worthy of be- 

 ing studied. What of the wealth of life seen earlier 

 in the day? IIow and where did it take shelter? It 

 would be hard, indeed, to determine this in every case ; 



