THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



225 



what tired, but certainly very well satisfied with our holiday trip to the "storm- 

 riven head of old Snowdon." 



Liverpool, September, 1885. 



THE ENTOMOLOGICAL YEAR. 



By ALBERT H. WATERS, B.A. 



OCTOBER. 



NOW the leaves are falling fast, 

 Gladsome Summer's days are past. 

 Yet when comes the evening gloom 

 Lotas flock to ivy bloom, 

 " Chestnuts," ruddy winged are there," 

 Lituras too the banquet share. 



The warm bright days of Summer are now giving place to the fogs and 

 rains of Autumn, and most of the gaily-tinted butterflies which gladdened the 

 entomologist's eyes, as he took a country ramble a month or two ago, are 

 fast disappearing, either killed off by the wet weather and decreased tempera- 

 ture, or hiding themselves in snug out-of-the-way places, until the cold of 

 late autumn and winter shall have given place to the genial mildness of 

 spring. Yet it is the great merit of the English climate in the eyes of an 

 entomologist that bright sunny days occur at all seasons of the year, and 

 there is no time when he need be idle. In October we are pretty sure to 

 have several such days, especially in the early part of the month, and it is on 

 such an one that I propose to take my readers on an imaginary entomologi- 

 cal ramble, by way of illustrating what the insect world is like in October. 



When we get out into the country we see the woods as rich in colour as 

 the sky on a summer's sunset, and like the resplendent hues surrounding the 

 declining sun, they seem to be promising a return of the time when the trees 

 will again be in all their verdant glory. Just as the sunset's tints seem to 

 say to us 



'Though the daylight fades away 

 There will come another day, 



There will be another dawn. 

 When before the rising sun 

 Darksome night will have begone ; 

 Surely as the gloom comes on 



There will be to-morrow morn. 



So the trees seem to say to us gleefully with their cheerful tints — 



'Though our leaves are turning sere, 

 'Though our branches dead and bare 

 Soon aloft we'll fling, 



