includes the birth and death--the Alpha and Omega--of Nature. Hence, it
is the most inviting to the contemplatist, and during a day in October,
the genius of melancholy may walk out and take her fill, in meditating
on its successive scenes of regeneration and decay.

Dissemination, or the _sowing of seed_, is the principal business
of this month in the economy of nature; which alone is an invaluable
lesson, a "precept upon precept" to a cultivated mind. This is variously
effected, besides by the agency of man; and it is a satire on his
self-sufficiency which should teach him that Nature worketh out her way
by means that he knoweth not.

Planting, that agreeable and patriotic art, is another of the October
labours. Here, however, the pride of man is again baffled, when he
considers how many thousand trees are annually planted by _birds_,
to whom he evinces his gratitude by destroying them, or cruelly
imprisoning them for the idle gratification of listening to their
warbling, which he may enjoy in all its native melody amidst the
delightful retreats of woods and groves. This leads us to the October
economy of birds. "Swallows are generally seen for the last time this
month, the house-martin the latest. The rooks return to the roost trees,
and the tortoise begins to bury himself for the winter. Woodcocks begin
to arrive, and keep dropping in from the Baltic singly or in pairs till
December. The snipe also comes now;" and with the month, by a kind of
savage charter, commences the destruction of the pheasant, to swell the
catalogue of the created wants and luxuries of the table. "One of the
most curious natural appearances," says Mr. L. Hunt, "is the
_gossamer_, which is an infinite multitude of little threads shot
out by minute spiders, who are thus wafted by the wind from place to
place." In this manner spiders are known to cross extents of many miles.