CHILDREN OF LIGHT 



THE MOAT 



FLOATING serenely on the quiet waters of a moat, the 

 white and yellow water-lilies suggest rival 

 Water- beauties. The white-chaliced ones may 

 Lilies stand for chastity, but the gold cups of the 



others suggest bibulous ideas : the curiously 

 alcoholic smell and the flagon-like shape of the fruit 

 having earned the name brandy-bottle. Old-time 

 botanists could hardly find words enough for praising 

 the white lilies. " There is I know not what of awful in 

 their beauty," wrote one enthusiast, and added, as 

 though driven by desperation to ungallantry, "It is 

 to all flowers what Mrs. Siddons is to all other women." 



CHILDREN OF LIGHT 



AN old and true observation is that the swifts are 

 most active in thundery weather: during 

 The Swifts' storms they are seen pursuing their head- 

 Serenade long courses as if they would race the 

 lightning. " Nice observers," as Gilbert 

 White remarked, have believed that when in hot 

 weather they form parties that race and scream above 

 villages, the cocks are serenading their sitting hens, 

 who answer, as the screechers rush by, with notes of 

 complacency. Other nice observers think with reason 

 that in late hours of July evenings the cocks play an 

 earnest game of pursuing the hens (which have left 

 their nests for an airing) to herd them back to their 

 duties for the night. 



JULY is pre-eminently the butterfly month; in every 

 97 H 



