136 PEPACTON 



or has a kind of rhythmic beat. What a gentle, 

 ■unobtrusive background it forms for the sharp, reedy 

 notes of the katydids! As the season advances, 

 their life ebbs and ebbs: you hear one here and one 

 there, but the air is no longer filled with that regu- 

 lar pulse-beat of sound. One by one the musicians 

 cease, till, perhaps on some mild night late in Octo- 

 ber, you hear — just hear and that is all — the last 

 feeble note of the last of these little harpers. 



LOVE AND WAR AMONG THE BIBDS 



In the spring movements of the fishes up the 

 stream, toward their spawning beds, the females are 

 the pioneers, appearing some days in advance of 

 the males. With the birds the reverse is the case, 

 the males coming a week or ten days before the 

 females. The female fish is usually the larger and 

 stronger, and perhaps better able to take the lead; 

 among most reptiles the same fact holds, and 

 throughout the insect world there is to my know- 

 ledge no exception to the rule. Among the birds, 

 the only exception I am aware of is in the case of 

 the birds of prey. Here the female is the larger 

 and stronger. If you see an exceptionally large 

 and powerful eagle, rest assured the sex is feminine. 

 But higher in the scale the male comes to the front 

 and leads in size and strength. 



But the first familiar spring birds are cocks; 

 hence the songs and tilts and rivalries. Hence also 

 the fact that they are slightly in excess of the other 

 sex, to make up for this greater exposure; appar- 



