NOTE 



IN substance my chronicle has appeared from week 

 to week in the " Standard," and I thank the 

 proprietor and the editor for their courtesy in 

 allowing me to publish it in book-form. If these 

 short stories of the year have any worth, it is that 

 of spontaneity. I have written down only the things 

 that I care for, and whilst they have been fresh in my 

 thoughts, and lately seen and enjoyed. It is truly a 

 faery procession that appeals to us when we review 

 even a few of the things which make up the year of 

 Nature a wonderful charm of birds, butterflies, stars, 

 clouds, woods, and waters. At random I recall a few 

 now : first, at the acme of the year, days of great June 

 with its clouds of endless forms and phantasies, wisp, 

 stipple and fleece of cirrus and cirrostratus, snow 

 mountains of cumulus ; July with sorceries of silence 

 and the scented breath of its eve, with its strange 

 dance of ghost moths at dusk, when Capella is flashing 

 intensely out of the afterglow and the gold taper of 

 Mars is alight in the awful blue ; August knee-deep 

 in the copse grasses with yellow-hammer days ; 

 autumn with its golden-haired larches ; winter with 

 a wine-coloured withy wood by the estuary, and the 



