112 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 
for most of the singing birds have gone, and 
the instrumental music of crickets, grasshoppers, 
and similar phonating insects has stopped for the 
season. Just as we were thinking of this, however, 
we heard curlews calling to one another encourag- 
ingly as they flew from the moorland towards 
their winter quarters by the seashore. There are 
also rooks and gulls, larks and robins, and a few 
other birds to be heard. Large numbers of lap- 
wings have been very busy lately hunting small 
deer in the bare fields, and some are speaking 
in a subdued way to one another as they unite into 
bands to migrate from Aberdeenshire to Ireland— 
one of their favorite autumnal journeys. At the 
same time it must be admitted that autumn is not 
very vocal, and we have to put the gain in color 
against the loss in sound. The rather overwhelming 
greenness of the vegetative period has been replaced 
by a great variety of hue, as when white light is 
split up by a prism, and though the splendor of 
individual flowers has passed, there are big splashes 
of color that offer compensation. 
, So much for sensory delight, but there is also a 
wealth of scientific interest. The great wave of life 
gathers strength in spring, rises to its full height in 
summer, sinks to rest in winter; the breaking time 
is autumn, and no season is richer in problems. 
We stoop and look along the links towards the 
sinking sun, and we see the quivering of myriads 
of fallen gossamer threads which earlier in the day 
served multitudes of small spiders as silken para- 
