Blatta Germanica. Houses and warehouses. Colias Chrysotheme. Norfolk? Colias Edusa, Clouded Yellow Butterfly. South, etc. Acherontia Atropos, Death's-head Hawk Moth. Gardens. Acherontia Atropos (Death's-head Hawkmoth). This large and splendid lepidopterous insect appears to be spread throughout the country; in some parts sparingly, in others abundantly. It has several times occurred near Nottingham, and, I understand, is of frequent occurrence near Dronfield, Derbyshire. On the Continent, where the Death's-head Hawk-moth abounds, it has been regarded by the superstitious with dread, not only on account of the figure of a death's head which is marked on its thorax, but also from the plaintive cry which it makes on being captured. Reaumur has, I think, clearly shown that this cry proceeds from the friction between the palpi and its long spiral tongue. Bees are so intimidated by this noise, that they allow it to enter their hives, and rob them of their winter stores, without resistance. The beautiful Sphinx Convolvuli (Convolvulus Hawk-moth) has recently been captured in the vicinity of Nottingham. OCTOBER. The harvest is past, the summer is ended. JEREMIAH viii. 20. OCTOBER bears pretty much the same character in the fall of the year, as April does in the spring. The beginning of April is still wintry, the end may often lay strong claims to the name of summer; the commencement of October is frequently distinguished by the lingering of summer-warmth and summer-flowers, the end by frosts and snows. It is a month as various as April-clear skies and fogs, drought and rain, sunshine and storm, greenness and nakedness, it has them all, and often in a rapid succession. In the early part of the month the hardy yarrow and a few other flowers remain, and the meadow-saffron (Colchicum autumnale) and the autumnal crocus (Crocus autumnalis) spring up and give a last gleam of floral beauty to the year. The grass, if the weather be mild, is vividly green, and luxuriant as in spring. Fine clear days occasionally come out, affording in the perfect repose of the land scape, the blueness of the waters, and the strong shadows cast by the trees upon the sunny ground, the highest pictorial beauty; but they are speedily past, and rains and mists wrap the face of the earth in gloom. Yet the glooms and obscurity of autumnal fogs, however dreary to the common eye, are not unwelcome to the lover of Nature. They give an air of wildness to the most ordinary scenery; but to mountains, to forests, to solitary sea-coasts, they add a sombre sublimity that at once soothes and excites the imagination; and even when not pleasant themselves, they minister to our pleasures by turning the heart to our bright firesides, to the warmth and perpetual summer of home. Orchards are now finally cleared of fruit, at least the trees, for in the cider counties they still lie in large heaps in the orchards in all their glory of gold and crimson, and many will lie there till frosty nights set in; the frost being supposed to improve their quality by increasing the quantity of saccharine matter in them, though they are apt to become decayed by too long lying, and to injure the flavour of the cider. Gardens have lost the chief of their attractions ; farmers are busy ploughing, and getting in their wheat. Swallows generally disappear this month. WOODS.-The glory of this month, however, is the gorgeous splendour of wood-scenery. Woods have in all ages vividly impressed the human mind; they possess a majesty and sublimity which strike and charm the eye. Their silence and obscurity affect the imagination with a meditative awe. They soothe the spirit by their grateful seclusion, and delight it by glimpses of their wild inhabitants, by their novel cries, and by odours and beautiful phenomena peculiar to themselves. This may be more particularly applied to our own woods, woods comparatively reclaimed, but in less populous and cultivated countries they possess a far more wild and gloomy character. The abodes of banditti, of wild beasts and deadly reptiles, they truly merit the epithet of "salvage woods," which Spenser has bestowed upon them. In remote ages their fearful solitudes and everbrooding shadows fostered superstition and peopled them with satyrs, fauns, dryads, hamadryads, and innumerable spirits of dubious natures. The same cause consecrated them to religious rites; it was from the mighty and ancient oak of Dodona that the earliest oracles of Greece were pronounced. The Syrians had their groves dedicated to Baal, and Ashtaroth the queen of Heaven, and infected the Israelites with their idolatrous customs. In the heart of woods the Druid cut down the bough of misletoe, and performed the horrible ceremonies of his religion. The philosophers of Greece T The resorted to groves, as schools the most august and befitting the delivery of their sublime precepts. In the depths of woods did anchorites seek to forget the world, and to prepare their hearts for the purity of heaven. To lovers and poets they have ever been favourite haunts; and the poets, by making them the scenes and subjects of their most beautiful fictions and descriptions, have added to their native charms a thousand delightful associations. Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, have sanctified them to the hearts of all generations. What a world of magnificent creations comes swarming upon the memory as we wander in woods! gallant knights and beautiful dames, the magical castles and hippogriffs of the Orlando; the enchanted forest, the Armida and Erminia of the Gerusalemma Liberata; "Fair Una with her milk-white lamb," and all the satyrs, Archimages, the fair Florimels and false Duessas of the Faery Queene; Ariel and Caliban, Jaques and his motley fool in Arden, the fairies of the Midsummer-Night's Dream, Oberon, Titania, and that pleasantest of all mischief-makers, ineffable Puck, the noble spirits of the immortal Comus. With such company, woods are to us anything but solitudes- they are populous and inexhaustible worlds, where creatures that mock the grasp but not the mind, a matchless phantasmagoria, flit before us; alternately make |