light draws on; our American rabbit also shuns the day; that pest of the farm-yard, the skunk, with the weasels, rove about on their mischievous errands at night. Some of those animals whose furs are most valued, as the ermine and sable, are nocturnal; so is the black-cat, and the rare wolverine also. Even our domestic cattle, the cows and horses, may frequently be seen grazing in the pleasant summer nights.
Monday, 6th.—Bright, warm day. Thermometer 84.
Heard an oriole among some elms on the skirts of the village this morning; it is rather late for them. We generally see little of them after July; when they have reared their family, and the young have come to days of discretion, these brilliant birds seem to become more shy; they are very apt to leave the villages about that time for the woods. Some few, however, occasionally remain later. But toward the last of this month they already take their flight southward.
A change has come over the bobolinks also—in July they lose those cheerful, pleasant notes with which they enliven the fields earlier in the season; it is true they are still seen fluttering over the meadows from time to time, with a peculiar cry of their own, and the young males acquire a pretty note of their own, which they sing in the morning, but they are already thinking of moving. They are very cheerful birds, and one misses them when they disappear. We seldom see them here in those large flocks common elsewhere; those about us are probably all natives of our own meadows. They travel southward very gradually, visiting first, in large parties, the wild rice-grounds of Pennsylvania and Maryland, where they remain some weeks; in October, they
