THE PASSING OF SUMMER 



in thousands. The pack rises; the falcon circles higher, 

 till almost out of sight ; but though he then swoops like 

 a meteor, he may have to rise and swoop several times 

 before striking. One gamekeeper has a story of a hobby 

 taking a swift which yet managed to escape its talons, 

 and though hotly pursued, and swooped upon time after 

 time, made good its escape. 



GOING going gone ! is the order of the day with the 

 swifts. Their flashing forms, on their 

 Our scythe-shaped wings, and their wild 



Almanac screeches, are always much missed when 

 they disappear, in the dim dawn of an early 

 August day, from thatched cottage eaves of village 

 streets. The cottagers' cats must miss them, too; cats 

 that may have spent half the summer hoping to capture 

 a swift on the wing as it almost brushes the ground on 

 entering a low nest. Gilbert White remarked that the 

 cats of Selborne sometimes succeeded in this ambition. 

 Alas! that summer goes on the swifts' sooty wings. 



12.. 



"3 



