THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS. 



45 



iazed and bewildered and loses his reckoning ! I am 

 not sure but it is worthy of imitation. 



But summer wanes, and autumn approaches. The 

 songsters of the seed-time are silent at the reaping of 

 the harvest. Other minstrels take up the strain. It 

 is the heyday of insect life. The day is canopied 

 with musical sound. All the songs of the spring and 

 summer appear to be floating, softened and refined, 

 in the upper air. The birds in a new, but less holi- 

 day suit, turn their faces southward. The swallows 

 flock and go ; the bobolinks flock and go ; silently 

 and unobserved, the thrushes go. Autumn arrives, 

 bringing finches, warblers, sparrows and kinglets from 

 the North. Silently the procession passes. Yonder 

 hawk, sailing peacefully away till he is lost in the 

 horizon, is a symbol of the closing season and the de- 

 parting birds. 



Yllow-billd Cuckoo. 



