110 Midnight Roamers. [CHAP. VII. 
.tween spring and autumn. The stillest, and quietest, and 
usually the darkest, part of the night—unless when the 
moon was up—was from about an hour after sunset until 
about an hour before sunrise. Yet, during that sombre 
time, when not asleep, he seldom failed to hear the sounds 
or voices, near or at a distance, of midnight wanderers 
prowling about. In the course of a few years he learned 
to know all the beasts and birds of the district frequented 
by him. He knew the former by their noises and grunt- 
ings, and the latter by the sound of their wings when fly- 
ing. When a feathered wanderer flew by, he could tell its 
call-note at once, and often the family as well as the spe- 
cies to which it belonged. But although he contrived to 
make himself acquainted with the objects of many of these 
midnight cries and noises, others-cost him a great deal of 
time and labor, as well as some dexterous mancuvring. 
The sounds of the midnight roamers, as well as the ap- 
pearance of the birds and animals, were invariably more nu- 
merous during the earlier part of the year. In the spring 
and early part of summer they were always the most live- 
ly. Toward the end of summer the sounds became few- 
er and less animated; and the animals themselves did not 
appear so frequently. Woods were the principal lodging- 
places of birds and animals. There were fewer in the 
fields; still fewer among the rocks or shingle by the sea- 
shore, except in winter; and in the hills, the fewest of all. 
‘When he made his first night expeditions to the inland 
country, the hoarse-like bark of the roe-deer, and the timid- 
like bleak-bleak of the hare puzzled him very much. He 
attributed these noises to other animals, before he was able, 
by careful observation, to attribute them to their true 
sources. Although the deer wanders about at all hours of 
the night, occasionally grunting or barking, it does not usu- 
ally feed at that time. The hare, on the other hand, feeds 
even during the darkest nights, and in spring and the early 
part of summer it utters its low cry of bleak-bleak. This 
