HARVEST TIME 



colour on its surface, true gold here, rich chocolate- 

 brown there, these make wheat matchless in beauty 

 and mien among our crops. It is good to lie on 

 the down and let the eye travel over the dark woods 

 of August, alternating with the light of cornfields, 

 waving and racing in the gale, or dotted with the 

 peaked sheaves, array in disarray. This is English 

 through and through. 



The Butterfly's Dressmaker 



By August the ranks of the full summer butter- 

 flies begin to thin. Some species, such as marble- 

 white and earlier skippers, have quite fallen out. 

 The silver-washed fritillary has lost his rich caparison. 

 Few of the dancing myriad of meadow-brown and 

 ringlet of July but by now have shed their velvety 

 bloom. In one a wing is frayed at the edge, another 

 is almost transparent like a skeleton leaf. Some 

 show an ugly, jagged gap in one wing or both, the 

 wanton peck of a small bird of prey. The butterfly 

 is so soon broken on the wheel of life. However, 

 during the last week, there have been new-comers, 

 if in nothing like meadow - brown and ringlet 

 quantity. The peacock, true to its simple peasant 

 name " harvest butterfly," has come with the first 

 fall of corn. In rough fields of hair grass, strawberry- 

 headed trefoil, and wild thyme, the second brood of 

 common blue butterflies is hatching, with the brown 

 argus and small copper. 



189 



