THE TURNING TIDE 205 



colonised by birds of other species, which roost in them ; 

 young birds still fresh from their own nests will often pack 

 at night into a mossy wren's or greenfinch's nest which they 

 light upon in the hedges at dusk. They are an alien breed, 

 and emphasise the nest's forsakenness. Still more marked 

 is the estrangement of the year when, as sometimes happens, 

 a mossy abandoned nest is occupied by a swarm of bumble- 

 bees and filled with their lumps of comb. This is the occa- 

 sional habit of the small greyish social bumble-bee which also 

 makes its nest under a dome of moss in woods. A snake 

 coiled in a hedgeside blackbird's nest is hardly a more 

 startling discovery than a buzzing swarm of bees in a nest 

 which a month before was the home of wrens. Occasionally 

 some specially attractive hole in a tree is colonised in late 

 summer by a pair of stock-doves, after it has been used earlier 

 in the year by jackdaws or tawny owls. This is a more 

 legitimate usurpation than that of the bees ; but it, too, marks 

 strongly the ageing of the year, with the contrasted recollec- 

 tion of the earlier brood now vanished into the world 

 outside. 



Up to the time of the blossoming of the elder and wild 

 rose just before midsummer, the flowering trees had the 

 fresh pink and white blossoms of spring. Now there comes 

 a change, and the sweet chestnut and lime which scent the 

 July lawns relapse to flowers of green, unable, as it seems, 

 to prolong the vernal colours beyond their time. In fine 

 July weather the catkins of the sweet chestnut are almost as 

 sweetly scented as the flowers of the lime, and they colour 

 the tree more conspicuously with a rich silky gloss, visible 

 from afar in the sunshine, and glimmering like water under 

 the flaws of the summer breeze. Both the breeze and the 

 innumerable insects of July appear to play their part in 

 fertilising the sweet chestnut's flower. The male and female 



