278 THE RING OF NATURE 



to light. The black bryony has receded like a 

 tide, leaving high and dry upon the hedge-top 

 a rope of fruit, thick as plaited onions, but more 

 brilliant than cherries. The long white hairs of 

 old-man' s-beard, traveller's-joy, or honesty, too, 

 persist in staying after the leaves are gone. But 

 they fail to cover the delicate basket that the 

 whitethroat wove there in the security of thick 

 leaves and in the abundance of all manner of 

 insect life in June. In less than two hundred 

 yards of hedge, looking only from one side, I 

 have counted seven whitethroat 's nests, though 

 in summer I do not happen to have looked into 

 one this year. 



There is no such picture of the fugitiveness of 

 summer as the whitethroat's nest, nearly as good 

 as when it was woven, but filled with dead leaves 

 now, and its architect five thousand miles away. 

 The thrush's nest is not the same. Often it has 

 haws hi it to show that it is still in use by some 

 thrifty mouse like a Bloomsbury mansion turned 

 into a warehouse. And from the same hedge that 

 holds the mud-lined nest you can start the thrush 

 that made it. He (if he had any notable share in 

 this bit of architecture) is singing now on the 

 ash tree near by whenever the sun gilds it. He 

 and she gobble the red berries from the hedge, 

 where the nightingale, wheatear, butcher-bird, 

 and many others never saw anything but the 

 blossom. 



It ought to be the gay butterflies that have 



