WITH each October in every year for a long time past, I have watched for the going of the martins, but have never yet contrived to witness the moment of their flight. It has always happened in the same way. One day they have been as busy as ever about the roof-eaves, their chattering song pervading the house unceasingly from dark to dark. And then a morning comes, generally towards the end of the first week in the month, when I awaken to a curious sense of strangeness and loss. First I mark the unwonted silence outside the windows, and then I guess what has come about. Looking forth, I see that the little mud-houses, huddled together in a long row under the eaves, are deserted and silent at last. But to-day, though I missed the departure of the martins as usual, I was not wholly disappointed. Getting up in the new silence and throwing the windows back, I looked along the roof-edge. Save for the chippering and fluttering of a few sparrows, there was nothing to be seen or heard in the dim grey light. But it seemed the little army could have been away only a few minutes before me, for while I looked, I saw the last of them depart. One single note of the remembered song broke out overhead; there was a whir of wings, and the little black-and-white bird lanced straight off, going due south unhesitatingly, as though the vanished throng of her companions was yet visible far away in the skies. It was a still, grey, warm morning. There had been no dew. Everything, as presently I went along by the wood-side, was quite dry; and though it was barely eight o’clock, all the spiders in the bushes were hard at work weaving their snares. It was almost perfect spinning weather. On windy mornings, though the webs must be made, the task is difficult and the work seldom properly carried out. But to-day there was only a vague air moving from the south-west, and all the spiders had got to work betimes, and with light hearts. The great charm in all nature study is to find out the truth for yourself at first hand. There are few things in my life I regret so keenly as the reading of nature books. This has robbed me of many a moment of pleasurable surprise; for to recognise a commonly accepted fact is poor substitute for its original discovery, although this discovery may have been made by others a thousand times before. Looking back over twenty years’ poking and prying in the woods and fields round about Windlecombe, I rejoice not so much at the many things I have found out, but at the fact of so many things still unread of, and still remaining to be discovered. This morning, as I went along by the bushes in the lee of the wood, and saw the spiders at work, it suddenly occurred to me that I knew little or nothing about them; and the recognition of this ignorance came to me as truest bliss. I fell to looking on at the ingenious, complicated work with almost as much anxiety and interest as the male spiders themselves.