Fifthly, go out in every variety of weather, and at night, as well as during the day. There are three scenes to every day--morning, noon, and early evening--when the very actors themselves are changed. To one who has never been in the fields at daybreak, the world is so new, so fresh and strange, as to seem like a different planet. And then the evening--the hour of dusk and the deeper, darker night! Go once this autumn into the woods at night. And lastly, don’t go into the woods as if they were a kind of Noah’s Ark; for you cannot enter the door and find all the animals standing in a row. You will go a great many times before seeing them all. Don’t be disappointed if they are not so plentiful there as they are in your books. Nature books are like menageries--the animals are caught and caged for you. The woods are better than books and just as full of things, as soon as you learn to take a hint, to read the signs, to put two and two together and get--four--four paws--black paws, with a long black snout, a big ringed and bushy tail--a coon! II Whether you live in the heart of a great city or in the open country, you ought to begin this fall to learn the names and habits of the birds and beasts (snakes, lizards, turtles, toads!) that live wild in your region. Even when all the summer birds have gone south for the winter, there will remain in your woods and fields crows, jays, juncos, tree sparrows, chickadees, kinglets, nuthatches, screech owls, barred owls,--perhaps even snowy owls,--quails, partridges, goldfinches, with now and then a flock of crossbills, snow buntings, and other northern visitors, and even a flicker, robin, and bluebird left over from the fall migrations. These are plenty to begin on; and yet, as they are so few, compared with the numbers of the summer, the beginner’s work is thus all the easier in the autumn. III You should go out one of these frosty mornings for chestnuts, if they grow in your woods; or for “shagbarks,” if you live in New England; for black walnuts, if you live in the Middle States; for pecan nuts, if you live in the Gulf States; for butternuts, if you live in the states of the Middle West; for--what kind of nuts can you not go for, if you live in California where they make everything grow! It matters little whether you go for paper-shelled English walnuts or for plate-armored pignuts so long as you _go_. It is the going that is worth while. IV You ought to go “cocooning” this fall--to sharpen your eyes. But do not go often; for once you begin to look for cocoons, you are in danger of seeing nothing else--except brown leaves. And how many brown leaves, that look like cocoons, there are! They tease you to vexation. But a day now and then “cocooning” will do you no harm; indeed, it will cultivate your habit of concentration and close seeing as will no other kind of hunting I know.