Oct. 9.—A brilliant morning! warm, without oppression; exhilarating, without chilling. Imagination cannot surely conceive, or caprice wish for an atmospheric temperature more delightful than what this day affords; having mingled with it just that portion of vital air which brisks up animality, without consuming the sustenance of life; satisfying the body with health, and filling the heart with gratitude. Fine threads of gossamer float lazily along the air, marking by this peculiar feature the autumn of our year. On our commons, and about our thistly hedge-rows, flocks of goldfinches[53] (fringilla carduelis), the united produce of the summer months, are sporting and glistening in the sunny beam, scattering all over the turf the down of the thistle, as they pick out the seed for their food. But this beautiful native has only a few short weeks in which it will have liberty to enjoy society and life. Our bird-catchers will soon entrap it; and of those that escape his toils, few will survive to the spring, should our winter prove a severe one. Long as I have noticed this bird, it has appeared to me that it never makes any plants generally its food, except those of the syngenesia class, and on these it diets nearly the whole year. In the spring season it picks out the seeds from the fir cones. During the winter months it very frequently visits our gardens, feeding on the seeds of the groundsel (senecio vulgaris), which chiefly abounds in cultivated places, and vegetates there throughout the coldest seasons. This, however, is an humble plant; and when covered by the snow, the poor birds are half famished for want. We then see them striving to satisfy their hunger by picking some solitary green head of the plant remaining above the frozen snow, and so tame, that they will suffer a very near approach before they take flight. As the frost continues, our little garden visitors diminish daily, and by spring only a few pairs remain of all the flocks of autumn. Yet it is very remarkable, notwithstanding this natural predilection, how readily this bird conforms to a perfect change in its diet, and in all the habits of its life. Most of our little songsters, when captured as old birds, become in confinement sullen and dispirited; want of exercise, and of particular kinds of food, and their changes, alter the quality of the fluids: they become fattened, and indisposed to action by repletion; fits and ailments ensue, and they mope and die. But I have known our goldfinch, immediately after its capture, commence feeding on its canary or hemp-seed, food it could never have tasted before, nibble his sugar in the wires like an enjoyment it had been accustomed to, frisk round its cage, and dress its plumage, without manifesting the least apparent regret for the loss of companions or of liberty. Harmless to the labors or the prospects of us lords of the creation, as so many of our small birds are, we have none less chargeable with the commission of injury