THE DOG-DAYS 



during their short Summer season that the cock has no 

 leisure at all for singing. 



THE time of the clear heat upon the herbs is the time of 

 the birds' silence; but about the harvest 

 Songs of fields the yellow hammers and the corn- 

 the Corn buntings sing on perpetually, and there is 

 something in keeping with a sleepy noon- 

 tide of the dog-days in their monotonous chants. And 

 we owe a debt to the greenfinches for their tinkling 

 music of these days. Where a canary is set to sing in a 

 cage outside a cottage window, and a greenfinch sings 

 in a garden, it were hard to distinguish one strain from 

 another; or to note any difference in the happiness of 

 the free bird's song and the captive's. The greenfinch, 

 in his sage-green coat, yellow-trimmed, always appeals 

 to us as being among the happiest of birds, one that 

 must for ever be musically prattling, so that it will sing 

 on the wing. Wordsworth's title fits it well, " Brother 

 of the leaves." 



A MINOR moorland pleasure of August (not shared by 



insects) is coming eye to eye with a lizard 



The Way as it basks in the heather the lizard 



of a which, if you neither move nor sigh too 



Lizard loud (as it is written in " Aurora Leigh "), 



" Will flatter you and take you for a stone." 



Then it will flash about your feet (to say it runs is to 



do scant justice to its amazing speed it is seen and is 



gone), or will itself sit so still that it might be lifeless, 



if it were not for the light in the jewels of eyes. The 



lizard enjoys a sun-bath when the noonday quiet holds 



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