The Open Air 



span of life was drawing to a close ; even when at last 

 he saw me, he could only run a few inches under 

 cover of a dead clover-plant. Thousands upon thou- 

 sands of mice perish like this as the winter draws on, 

 born too late in the year to grow strong enough or 

 clever enough to prepare a store. Other kinds of 

 mice perish like leaves at the first blast of cold air. 

 Though but a mouse, to me it was very wretched to 

 see the chilled creature, so benumbed as to have 

 almost lost its sense of danger. There is something 

 so ghastly in birth that immediately leads to death; 

 a sentient creature born only to wither. The earth 

 offered it no help, nor the declining sun; all things 

 organised seem to depend so much on circumstances. 

 Nothing but pity can be felt for thousands upon thou- 

 sands of such organisms. But thus, too, many a 

 miserable human being has perished in the great 

 Metropolis, dying, chilled and benumbed, of starva- 

 tion, and finding the hearts of fellow-creatures as 

 bare and cold as the earth of the clover-field. 



In these fields outside London the flowers are 

 peculiarly rich in colour. The common mallow, whose 

 flower is usually a light mauve, has here a deep, almost 

 purple bloom; the bird's-foot lotus is a deep orange. 

 The fig-wort, which is generally two or three feet high, 

 stands in one ditch fully eight feet, and the stem is 

 more than half an inch square. A fertile soil has 

 doubtless something to do with this colour and vigour. 

 The red admiral butterflies, too, seemed in the summer 

 more brilliant than usual. One very fine one, whose 

 broad wings stretched out like fans, looked simply 

 splendid floating round and round the willows which 

 marked the margin of a dry pool. His blue markings 

 were really blue blue velvet his red, and the white 

 stroke shone as if sunbeams were in his wings. I wish 



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