A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 25 



no bees came to sprawl in their cups. Hoverer-flies 

 buzzed about the clumps ; the hoverer which in its 

 middle place between the over-virtuous bee and the 

 criminal wasp, represented to my childish fancy a 

 not unfriendly type of the mean ; dare I say, some 

 sort of personal ideal ? Everywhere rang the metallic 

 " pink-pink " of the chaffinch and the " pitcher-wee " 

 of the greater tit. Of late that " pink-pink," indis- 

 solubly connected with the scientific, industrious, and 

 enormous destruction of fruit-buds on the plum-trees, 

 has so grated on my ears as to suggest the clink of 

 the ramrod in the old muzzle-loader, the brutum 

 fulmen I keep for such thieves ; but to-day in the 

 bland air and warmth it has a softer descant. The 

 modern gardener has need of soothing hours such as 

 these to maintain his patience in the endless war with 

 nature and with art, with weed and blight and grub 

 and bird, with the destroyed balance of evil that 

 man is answerable for, with the boy-bandit and the 

 prowling, excavating tabby. If only the boy would 

 catapult the cat effectually, or the cat catch the finch, 

 or the finch eat the caterpillar! But ay me! the 

 chaffinch and the bullfinch trim out the fat bloom- 

 buds, and tear the crocuses for fun, the mouse noses 

 down to the new-sown peas, the cat gambols upon 

 one's choicest seedlings, and the boy in the season of 



