Cessation of song--Oak woods less silent than others--Mixed gatherings of birds in oak woods--Abundance of caterpillars--Rapacious insects--Wood ants--Alarm cries of woodland birds--Weasel and small birds--Fascination--Weasel and short-tailed vole--Account of Egyptian cats fascinated by fire--Rabbits and stoats--Mystery of fascination--Cases of pre-natal suggestion--Hampshire pigs fascinated by fire--Conjectures as to the origin of fascination--A dead squirrel--A squirrel's fatal leap--Fleas large and small--Shrew and fleas--Fleas in woods--The squirrel's disposition--Food-hiding habit in animals--Memory in squirrels and dogs--The lower kind of memory. CHAPTER VI. Insects in Britain--Meadow ants--The indoor view of insect life--Insects in visible nature--The humming-bird hawk-moth and the parson lepidopterist--Rarity of death's-head moth--Hawk-moth and meadow-pipit--Silver-washed fritillaries on bracken--Flight of the white admiral butterfly--Dragon-flies--Want of English names--A water-keeper on dragon-flies--Moses Harris--Why moths have English names--Origin of the dragon-fly's bad reputation--_Cordulegaster annulatus_--_Calopteryx virgo_--Dragon-flies congregated--Glow-worm--Firefly and glow-worm compared--Variability in light--The insect's attitude when shining--Supposed use of the light--Hornets--A long-remembered sting--The hornet local in England--A splendid insect--Insects on ivy blossoms in autumn. CHAPTER VII. Great and greatest among insects--Our feeling for insect music--Crickets and grasshoppers--_Cicada anglica_--_Locusta viridissima_--Character of its music--Colony of green grasshoppers--Harewood Forest--Purple emperor--Grasshoppers' musical contests--The naturalist mocked--Female _viridissima_--Over-elaboration in the male--Habits of female--Wooing of the male by the female. CHAPTER VIII. Hampshire, north and south--A spot abounding in life--Lyndhurst--A white spider--Wooing spider's antics--A New Forest little boy--Blonde gipsies--The boy and the spider--A distant world of spiders--Selborne and its visitors--Selborne revisited--An owl at Alton--A wagtail at the Wakes--The cockerel and the martin--Heat at Selborne--House crickets--Gilbert White on crickets--A colony of field crickets--Water plants--Musk mallow--Girl buntings at Selborne--Evening gatherings of swifts at Selborne--Locustidæ--_Thamnotrizon cinereus_--English names wanted--Black grasshopper's habits and disposition--Its abundance at Selborne. CHAPTER IX.