THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 53 
NOTES ON BIOLOGICAL SUBJECTS. 
Read -before the Hamilton Association. 
BS AW Men WANES Ss HA: Ginn Youn ON: 
Pye 
The exceptionally warm and fine autumn of 1893 has been 
attended with corresponding effects on bird-life and on vegetation. 
The heat and dryness of the month of August and of the first half of 
September parched many of the meadows and pastures, and many 
springs and rivulets failed to afford their customary water supply. 
Seemingly from this cause, the large meadow larks and also the 
shore larks deserted many of their accustomed haunts hereabouts, 
and only returned when the autumnal rains had somewhat replen- 
‘ ished the ditches and water courses. A great number of small birds 
and quadrupeds are attracted by a spring or rivulet for bathing and 
other advantages, and of this fact the predatory hawks and shrikes 
are well aware and pass much of their time on the upper branches 
of any convenient tree that commands a view of these indispensible 
resorts of their victims, and it may be an allowable conjecture that 
the absence of the larks for nearly two months, as referred to above, 
is to be accounted for by the bird exigencies requiring the presence 
of large streams and therefore causing migration to an unfailing 
water supply. 
A greater number than the average of days in October were 
characterized by warm sunshine and a serene atmosphere, and on 
some of these autumn festivals the gossamer spiders, in woods and 
bordering shrubberies, appeared day by day in vast numbers— 
literally in myriads—and their silken, flossy, waving and floating 
attenuated threads seemed to invade the whole lower atmosphere. 
Some gossamer fibres seemed loose from any point of attachment 
and would rise or fall with the slightest breathings of Aeolus. The 
minute fabricators of these gauzy fibres could be seen moving, as if 
with balloon powers of ascension, upwards from one spray or branch- 
tip of an evergreen to another, and the supporting line being only 
