16 NATURE NEAR LONDON 



higher at every turn till they are lost and no more to be 

 distinguished against a shining white cloud. Large dark 

 humble bees roam slowly, and honey bees with more 

 decided flight. Glistening beetles, green and gold, run 

 across the bare earth of the path, coming from one 

 crack in the dry ground and disappearing in the (to them) 

 mighty chasm of another. 



Tiny green " hoppers " odd creatures shaped some- 

 thing like the fancy frogs of children's story-books 

 alight upon it after a spring, and pausing a second, with 

 another toss themselves as high as the highest bennet 

 (veritable elm-trees by comparison), to fall anywhere out 

 of sight in the grass, Reddish ants hurry over. Time 

 is money ; and their business brooks no delay. 



Bee-like flies of many stripes and parti-coloured robes 

 face you, ( uspended in the air with wings vibrating so 

 swiftly as to be unseen ; then suddenly jerk themselves a 

 few yards to recommence hovering. A greenfinch rises 

 with a yellow gleam and a sweet note from the grass, 

 and is off with something for his brood, or a starling, 

 solitary now, for his mate is in the nest, startled from 

 his questing, goes straight away, 



Dark starlings, greenfinch, gilded fly, glistening beetle, 

 blue butterfly, humble bee with scarf about his thick 

 waist, add their moving dots of colour to the surface. 

 There is no design, no balance, nothing like a pattern 

 perfect on the right-hand side, and exactly equal on the 

 left-hand. Even trees which have some semblance of 

 balance in form are not really so, and as you walk round 

 them so their outline changes. 



Now the path approaches a stile set deep in thorns and 

 brambles, and hardly to be gained for curved hooks and 

 prickles. But on the briars June roses bloom, arches of 

 flowers over nettles, burdock, and rushes in the ditch 



