h, and the first of the
blue-winged teal and black duck are seen straggling down the rivers. At
this season, and nearly coincident with the change, the peculiar annual
catarrhs return. These are colds (so called) which at some period of the
person's life were taken about or soon after the period of change, and
have returned every year, at, or near the same period. They soon become
_habitual_, and no care or precaution will prevent them. I know one
gentleman who has had this annual cold in August for twenty-seven years,
with entire regularity; and another who has had it nineteen years; and
many others for shorter periods. I never knew one which had recurred for
two or three years that could be afterward prevented, or broken up. _Very
instructive are these annual catarrhs_ to those who think health worth
preserving, and in relation to the change of transit.

_The change is felt over the entire hemisphere._ Between the 20th of
August and the 10th of September hurricanes originate in the tropics and
pursue their curving and recurving way up over us; or long "north-easters"
commence in the interior and pass off to E. N. E. on to the Atlantic,
followed now in a more marked degree by the peculiar N. W. wind, so common
over the entire Continent in autumn and winter.

By the 10th of September the pigeons may be seen in flocks in the morning,
and just prior to the setting in of a brisk N. W. wind, hurrying away
southward with a sagacity that we scarcely appreciate, to avoid the
anticipated rigors of winter, and to be followed soon by all the migratory
feathered tribes that remain.

The nights grow cooler, although the sun shines hot in the day-time, and
woe to the person, unless with an iron constitution, who disregards the
change, and exposes himself or herself without additional protection, to
its influence. Nature has taken care of those who depend upon her, or upon
instinct, for protection. The feathers of birds and water-fowl are full;
the hair and the fur are grown. Beasts and birds have been preparing for
the change, and are ready when it begins. They know that the earth is
changing. The shifting machinery is fast carrying south that excess of
negative electricity which has so much to do with giving it its summer
heat. They feel its absence, even during the day, and the contrast between
that and the positively electrified northern atmosphere, which now follows
every retreating wave of condensation.

The musk-rat builds,