24) TIMES AND SEASONS. 



except the snowy peaks. As the sun sank lower, a pale 

 rose tmt s^^reacl over their snowy mantles, deepening to a 

 light crimson, and then a darker tone when the highest 

 shone out, as sparkling as a ruby ; and at last, for only a 

 few minutes, it aj^peared like a crimson star/' * 



We come back from scenes so gorgeous, to quiet, homely 

 England. How pleasant to the schoolboy, just infected 

 with the entomoloo;ical mania, is an evenino; hour in June 

 devoted to " mothino- ! " An hour before sunset he had 

 been seen mysteriously to leave home, carrying a cup 

 filled with a mixture of beer and treacle. With this he 

 had bent his steps to the edge of a wood, and with a 

 painter's brush had bedaubed the trunks of several large 

 trees, much to the bewilderment of the woodman and his 

 dog. Now the sun is going down like a glowing coal 

 behind the hill, and the youthful savant again seeks the 

 scene of his labours, armed with insect-net, pill-boxes, 

 and a bull's-eye lantern. He pauses in the high-hedged 

 lane, for the bats are evidently playing a successful game 

 here, and the tiny gray moths are fluttering in and out of 

 the hedge by scores. Watchfully now he holds the net ; 

 there is one whose hue betokens a prize. Dash ! — yes ! 

 it is in the muslin bag ; and, on holding it up against 

 the western sky, he sees he has got one of the most 

 beautiful of the small moths, — the "butterfly emerald." 

 Yonder is a white form dancing backward and forward 

 with regular oscillation in the space of a yard, close over 

 the herbage. That must be the " ghost-moth," surely ! — 



* Atkinson's Sihena, p. 221. 



