236 AUGUST. 



scattered, while others gather into multitudinous flocks, 

 and seem to be enjoying a long holiday of festivities, 

 while preparing to leave their native fields. Their songs, 

 lasting only during the period of love, are discontinued 

 since it is past, and their young are no longer awaiting 

 their care. On every new excursion into the fields I 

 perceive the sudden absence of some important woodland 

 melodist. During the interval between midsummer and 

 early autumn one voice after another drops away, until 

 the little song-sparrow is left again to warble alone in the 

 fields and gardens, where he sang the earliest hymn of 

 rejoicing over the departure of winter. 



Since the birds have become silent, they have lost their 

 pleasant familiarity with man, and have acquired an 

 unwonted shvness. The warblers that were wont to sin^ 

 on the boughs just over our heads, or at a short distance 

 from our path, now keep at a timid distance, chirping 

 with a complaining voice, and flee at our approach, before 

 we are near enough to observe their altered plumage. 

 The plovers have come forth from the places where they 

 reared their young and congregate in large flocks upon 

 the marshes ; and as we stroll along the sea-shore, we are 

 often agreeably startled by the sudden twittering flight 

 of these graceful birds, aroused from their haunts by our 

 unexpected intrusion. 



It is now almost impossible for the rambler to pene- 

 trate some of his old accustomed paths in the lowlands, 

 so thickly are they interwoven with vines and trailing 

 herbs. Several species of cleavers with their slender 

 prickly branches form a close network among the ferns 

 and rushes ; and the smilax and blackberry vines weave 

 an almost impenetrable thicket in our ancient pathway. 

 The fences are festooned with the blue flowers of the 

 woody nightshade and the more graceful plants of the 

 glycine are twining among the faded flowers of the elder 



