AN ARCADIAN CALENDAR 



obliged to stand on its shoulders to drop food into the 

 cavernous mouth. When a farmyard cat stalked into the 

 meadow, the cuckoo paid no attention to alarm-cries, 

 only gaping for more food. It seemed as stupid as a 

 dotterel, and almost deserving its odious old-time 

 nickname of the " gowk." 



DOWN THE LANE 



LIKE a little flower of the air, the orange-tip butterfly 

 now zigzags down the parsley-bordered 

 The lane. The quidnunc notes the fallacy of its 



Orange-Tip name, which falsely describes the female, 

 while the actual tips of the male's wings 

 are black. It was born a mimic. The caterpillars are 

 now found on seed-pods of hedge-mustard or lady's- 

 smock, and are marvellously like the pods, and keep 

 pace with them as they grow. When the butterfly rests, 

 it lays back its showy fore- wings, and elevates its hind 

 ones, whose greyish-green mottling blends magically 

 with the parsley's colour scheme. 



To and from her hole in the old willow-tree goes the 

 leaf-cutter bee, fetching and carrying from 

 The a garden sections of rose-leaves for her 



Upholsterer nest. Within the hole is some bee-bread, 

 Bee and her egg. With mandibles for scissors, 



with exquisite art she cuts narrow pieces 

 of leaf for upholstering the sides of her cell, and circular 

 ones for the end, as round as if designed by a compass, 

 flying off with a triumphant hum, always on a bee-line 

 for the nest. Her toil finished, she dies; perhaps never 

 thinking that while she was away from the cells, an 



78 



