CHAPTEE LV. 



Spring Hood's Parody of Thomson's Invocation The excellence of Nettle-Top Soup 

 Cock-crowing Birds'-nesting Professor Geikie Curious Story of an old Pipe- 

 Tune. 



THIS is the 1st of May [1877], sacred in the ecclesiastical 

 calendar to St. Philip and St. James the Apostles. In ordinary 

 speech we may now call it summer, we suppose, and it is to be 

 hoped that it may prove summer indeed, not in name merely, or 

 astronomically, but veritably, that is, meteorologically as well ; 

 such a summer as delighted our boyhood with its bright sun and 

 cloudless skies, or with such clouds only as served to modify 

 and temper a brilliancy and heat that might otherwise have 

 been excessive ; the earth verdant and flower-bespangled under 

 foot and around, the very floods and trees of the forest, in the 

 grand hyperbole of Scripture, " clapping their hands for joy : " 

 the singing of birds the while, jubilant and joyous, in copse and 

 wild-wood, its fitting bass, the murmur of innumerable bees ; while 

 the fluttering of splendidly coloured butterflies, as they danced 

 along in many a lawless zig-zag and merry-go-round, constantly 

 verified and bore witness to the beauty of the Eoman poet's 

 famous line, which may be rendered 



" Lo ! fluttering past, flowers swimming in liquid air ! " 



However the summer may turn out, of the spring at least but little 

 good speaking of course meteorologically can be said. It was, 

 quoad hoc, an imposture, and nothing else, and always reminding 



