wills by night. It matters not in what stage of its existence the insect is destroyed; it is still demonstrable that these minute creatures cannot be kept in check unless they are attacked in all stages. Birds are their only effectual destroyers. Man cannot check their multiplication or their ravages by artificial means. He cannot even protect his garden. Their destructive and infinite multiplication can be prevented only by Nature's own agents, which she has created with this power. A million of ichneumons would not do the work of a dozen birds.

SEPTEMBER.

WE have hardly become familiar with summer ere autumn arrives with its cool nights, its foggy mornings, and its clear brilliant days. Yet the close of summer is but the commencement of a variety of pleasant rural occupations, of reaping and fruit-gathering, and the still more exciting sports of the field. After this time we are comparatively exempt from the extremes of temperature, and we are free to ramble at any distance, without exposure to sudden showers, that so often spring up in summer without warning us of their approach. Though the spicy odors of June are no longer wafted upon the gȧles, there is a clearness and freshness in the atmosphere more agreeable than fragrance, giving buoyancy to the mind and elasticity to the frame.

The various employments of the farmer are changed into agreeable recreations; and the anxious toils of planting and haymaking have given place to the less wearisome and more exhilarating labors of the harvest. Beside the pleasures of the sportsman, there are successions of fruit-gatherings and rural excursions of various kinds, from the beginning of this month to the end of the next, that impart to the young many cheerful themes for remembrance during the rest of their days. The provident simpler may be seen upon the hills busily employed in gathering medicinal plants for her own humble dispensary. Close by her side are neatly bound sheaves of thorough wort, hardhack, bear-berry, pennyroyal, and life-everlasting, which she benevolently pro

vides for the supply of her neighborhood. And while thus employed, she feels the reward of the just in the pleasing contemplation of the good she may perform, when winter comes with its fevers and colds.

There is no season when the landscape presents so beautiful an appearance just before sunset, as during this month. The grass has a singular velvety greenness, being without any mixture of downy tassels and panicles of seeds. For the present covering of the fields is chiefly the second growth of vegetation, after the first has been mowed by the farmer or cropped by the grazing herds. The herbage displays little but the leaves, which have been thickened in their growth and made green by the early rains of autumn. When the atmosphere has its usual autumnal clearness and the sun is just declining, while his rays gleam horizontally over the fields, the plain exhibits the most brilliant verdure, unlike that of the earlier months. When this wide landscape of uniform greenness is viewed in opposition to the blue firmament, it seems as if the earth and the sky were vying with each other in the untarnished loveliness of their appropriate colors.

There is usually a serenity of the weather for the greater part of September, unknown to the other autumn months. Yet this is no time for inaction; for the temperate climate, too pleasant for confinement, and too cool for indolent repose, invites even the weary to ramble. Of all the months, the climate of September is the most equable and salubrious, and nearly the same temperature is wafted from every quarter of the heavens. The sea-breezes spring up from the ocean almost with the mildness of the southwest, and the rude north-wind has been softened into a delightful blandness by his tender dalliance with

summer.

One of the charms of the present month is the profusion

of bright-colored fruits that meet the eye on every side in the deserted haunts of the flowers. The scarlet berries of the nightshade, varied with their blossoms, hang like clusters of rubies from the crevices in the stone-walls through which the vines have made their clambering tour. On each side of the fences the elder-trees in interrupted rows are bending down with the weight of their dark purple fruit, and the catbird may be seen busily gathering them for his noonday repast. Above all, the barberry-bushes scattered over the hills, some in irregular clumps, others following the lines of the stone-walls, down narrow lanes and over sandy hills, with their long slender branches fringed with delicate racemes of variegated fruit, changing from a greenish white to a bright scarlet, form hedge-rows as beautiful as art, without its formality.

September is the counterpart of June, and displays the transformation of the flowers of early summer into the ripe and ruddy harvest. The wild-cherry trees are heavily laden with their dark purple clusters, and flocks of robins and waxwings are busy all the day in their merry plunder among the branches. But in the fruits there is less to be loved than in the flowers, to which imagination is prone to assign some moral attributes. The various fruits of the harvest we prize as good and bounteous gifts. But flowers win our affections, like beings endowed with life and thought; and when we notice their absence or their departure we feel a painful sense of melancholy, as when we bid adieu to living friends. With flowers we associate the sweetness, the loveliness, and the dear and bright remembrances of spring. Like human beings, they have contributed to our moral enjoyments. But there are no such ideas associated with the fruits, and while the orchards are resplendent with their harvest, they can never affect the mind like the sight of flowers.

BIRDS OF THE AIR.

ALL birds that take their food while on the wing, and seldom or not much in any other way, may be arbitrarily designated as Birds of the Air, whether their prey inhabit the air, like the insects taken by the Swallows and Flycatchers, or the cup of a flower, like those taken by the Humming-Bird. Of these the Swallows, including the Martin and the Swift, are the most conspicuous and most numerous in this part of the world. These birds have large wings, fly very swiftly, and without a great deal of apparent motion of their wings. It could hardly be explained on mechanical principles how they are able to pass through the air with such rapidity. While watching them on the wing, it seems as if they were never weary; but Daines Barrington says the Swallow makes frequent pauses for rest while engaged in the pursuit of insects.

THE BARN-SWALLOW.

This is the species with which the inhabitants of New England are best acquainted. But they are every year becoming fewer, and this diminution of their numbers is attributed by Mr. S. P. Fowler to our modern tight barns. Though they often build under the eaves of houses and in sheds, they find in these places but limited accommodations, compared with the old-fashioned barns that were formerly scattered over the whole country. There are now hundreds only where thirty years ago there were