THE MAKERS OF SUMMER. 229 



that it is the true one, for they may look at matters in 

 an entirely different manner from what we do. The 

 effect of the cuckoo's course is to cause an immense 

 destruction of insects, and it is really one of the most 

 valuable as well as the most welcome of all our birds. 



The thin pipe of the gnat heard at night is often 

 alluded to, half in jest, by our older novelists. It is now, 

 I think, dying out a good deal, and local where it stays. 

 It occurred to me, on seeing some such allusion the other 

 day, that it was six years since I had heard a gnat in a 

 bedroom — never since we left a neighbourhood where 

 there had once been marshy ground. Gnats are, how- 

 ever, less common generally — exclusive, of course, of 

 those places where there is much water. All things are 

 local, insects particularly so. On clay soils the flies in 

 summer are most trying ; black flies swarm on the eyes 

 and lips, and in the deep lanes cannot be kept off 

 without a green bough. It requires the utmost patience 

 to stay there to observe anything. In a place where 

 the soil was sand, with much heath, on elevated ground, 

 there was no annoyance from flies. There were crowds 

 of them, but they did not attack human beings. You 

 might sit on a bank in the fields with endless insects 

 passing without being irritated ; but everywhere out of 

 doors you must listen for the peculiar low whir of the 

 stoat-fly, who will fill his long grey body with your 

 blood in a very few minutes. This is the tsetse of our 

 woods. 



