y6 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



quite distinct. Even the trill of the letter ' r ' is very pronounced, 

 and an emigrant is said once to have jocularly remarked " that this 

 country was evidently laid out for an English speaking race, where 

 eve'n the birds in three or four instances call to each other with an 

 imperial purity of enunciation, and cannot be corrupted into dialects 

 or provinciaUsms, but stick to their watchwords, " Whip-poor-Will," 

 " Kill-deer," and " Bob White " in the presence of all comers. 



The bob-o-links have been, I think, unusually numerous and 

 songful during the present summer. These birds did not come into 

 the new clearings of this part of Burford Township until extensive 

 areas of clover and other meadow grasses had been established. 

 The bob-o-links and larks dislike the smoke and burning operations 

 of clearing bush land, and though they were numerous three or four 

 miles away (in other settlements), twelve or fourteen .years elapsed 

 after the land was cleared ere they came to regularly frequent these 

 parts. 



After a dry period of about two weeks duration, we in this sec- 

 tion were favored with some very copious showers on June 29th, and 

 to a human weather guesser the indications pointed to an unsettled 

 condition of the atmosphere. On Wednesday morning, the 30th, 

 the sky was partly overcast with dark and threatening clouds, and 

 the air was stuffy with a light and variable breeze, but the spider 

 tribe seemed to have had information from a private source that dry, 

 fine weather was coming, or had set in, and the tilled fields were at 

 dawn on the 30th thickly bestrewn with cobwebs that had been 

 woven during the previous night; and the sequel proved that the spider 

 instinct was a trustworthy one, for subsequently to the web spreading 

 phenomenon above noticed, there was a succession of glorious, 

 bright days. The extensive areas overspreadby the myriads of webs, 

 where the earth's surface w^as suitable to the insect's life operations, 

 and not encumbered by dense vegetable growth ofgrasses or growing 

 grain, created surprise, and the more especially as these insect fabri- 

 cations seemed to be the work of a single night, as scarcely a vestige 

 of the devices and snares were to be seen at dark on the evening of 

 the 29th. 



Many of the so-called lower species seem to have no idea of 

 solid transparencies, such as window glass, as was lately brought to 

 the notice of this writer by a large buzz fly which had found a lodg- 



