CIRRUS DAYS 



These are days for the most beautiful of all 

 cloud forms and fancies, those of cirrus, the still 

 cloud of the freezing heights of the sky. It is 

 the cloud that is pencilled out into the finest, filmiest 

 forms. No two cirrus clouds are quite alike in 

 detail, but there are various figures known by a 

 watcher of clouds. There is the marestail ; there 

 is the backbone. Endless is the series of wisps and 

 curlings of cirrus. Some cirrus clouds remind one 

 of the stipple work of the steel engraver others of 

 his line work. Sometimes, in place of cirrus in the 

 blue, hangs a great sheet of dappled grey : it is the 

 fleece of heaven. After dark in June the beautiful 

 constellation of the Scorpion is on the horizon south- 

 ward. It has the reddest star in all the sky. This 

 is the Scorpion's heart, called Antares. These are 

 Antares nights. 



Butterfly Railway Banks 



Late in May and early in June the sun-steeped 

 slant of the grassy railway bank is a rare place for 

 earlier summer butterflies and day-flying moths. 

 There are notices to trespassers made to be broken 

 now and then. Where a branch or farm road passes 

 under the railway arch, it is easy not to see a warning 

 to trespassers. You climb the post and rails, and 

 lie down in the grass where the yellow and red of 

 birdsfoot trefoil and the strawberry-headed trefoil 



