The Open Air 



Watching these wasps I found two cocoons of pale 

 yellow silk on a branch of larch, and by them a green 

 spider. He was quite green two shades, lightest on 

 the back, but little lighter than the green larch bough. 

 An ant had climbed up a pine and over to the extreme 

 end of a bough ; she seemed slow and stupefied in her 

 motions, as if she had drunken of the turpentine and 

 had lost her intelligence. The soft cones of the larch 

 could be easily cut down the centre with a penknife, 

 showing the structure of the cone and the seeds inside 

 each scale. It is for these seeds that birds frequent 

 the fir copses, shearing off the scales with their beaks. 

 One larch cone had still the tuft at the top a pine- 

 apple in miniature. The loudest sound in the wood 

 was the humming in the trees; there was no wind, 

 no sunshine ; a summer day, still and shadowy, under 

 large clouds high up. To this low humming the 

 sense of hearing soon became accustomed, and it 

 served but to render the silence deeper. In time, as 

 I sat waiting and listening, there came the faintest 

 far-off song of a bird away in the trees; the merest 

 thin upstroke of sound, slight in structure, the echo 

 of the strong spring singing. This was the summer 

 repetition, dying away. A willow-wren still remem- 

 bered his love, and whispered about it to the silent 

 fir tops, as in after days we turn over the pages of 

 letters, withered as leaves, and sigh. So gentle, so 

 low, so tender a song the willow-wren sang that it 

 could scarce be known as the voice of a bird, but was 

 like that of some yet more delicate creature with the 

 heart of a woman. 



A butterfly with folded wings clung to a stalk of 

 grass ; upon the under side of his wing thus exposed 

 there were buff spots, and dark dots and streaks drawn 

 on the finest ground of pearl-grey, through which 



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