Signals of Autumn 183 



country gardens the first crisp lime-leaves drift 

 down. 



In towns the winds of August thin the foliage 

 more freely. After the first burst of July heat 

 the toasted leaves of planes and elms and limes 

 begin to drift thickly down ; and if the heat has 

 been prolonged and severe, the trees in the parks 

 and square gardens become noticeably thinner 

 against the sky. Untimely bonfires begin to 

 smoulder in corners of the parks, intruding on the 

 disorganized natural calendar of town with a breath 

 which belongs in the country to late September 

 and October. In town and country alike, leaves, 

 and clusters of leaves, fretted through the long 

 calm days by summer caterpillars and cockchafers 

 come tossing to earth in the August rain and wind. 

 The same winds cast down a sprinkling of the 

 caterpillars which have caused the decay. A 

 sudden gust may catch them when their great 

 hind claspers are relaxed in crawling ; or sometimes 

 the leaves that they have half gnawed give way, and 

 they plump down, grasping the torn fragment. The 

 long green caterpillars of the buff-tip moth, with 

 their parallel black lines, are among the commonest 

 of these living windfalls. They feed in large 

 colonies in the upper boughs of elms, limes, and 

 several other trees, on which large patches stripped 

 bare by them can often be seen from below in later 

 summer. Their ravages are more concentrated 

 on a single bough than those of the minute leaf- 

 roller caterpillars which strip the oak-tops in June, 

 but they work more thoroughly within their limits. 



