CHAFERS AND CLOCKS 227 



bees, and after a remarkable series of transformations re- 

 appear on the spring banks to browse on the young shoots 

 as wingless adult oil- beetles. Many small beetles are 

 parasitic in the nests of birds and animals, but they are 

 seldom seen except by naturalists who take the trouble to 

 search for them. 



In fine, hot summers, a little before the time when the 

 small July chafer buzzes round the tops of the trees, the 

 beetle known as the bracken-clock appears abundantly 

 among the bracken on the moors. This is a small round 

 coppery-red species also known in the south of England as 

 the hazel-fly. It feeds on both plants. It is a favourite bait 

 with fishermen, both alive and imitated with cock's hackle ; 

 and it is at least one of the wild originals of that mysterious 

 but celebrated artificial insect, the coch-y-bondhu. Both for 

 trout and anglers its fame is greatest on the open hills of the 

 north and west, where there are few trees to breed other 

 common vegetarian beetles of the lowlands, but bracken 

 grows in deep beds to the very brink of the mountain tarns. 

 In these tarns there are often trout both numerous and 

 heavy, which have developed fitful appetites in their bleak 

 haunts, where the food supply is irregular and usually scanty. 

 The warm summer weather stimulates them to unaccustomed 

 activity, and the same weeks bring the bracken-clocks. 

 They rise in the wind from the bracken, and fall in the 

 gusts that eddy about the rocks round the tarn ; and the 

 tarn trout make holiday, and gorge upon them as the low- 

 land trout do a few weeks earlier on the Mayfly. The 

 angler finds the same exceptional opportunity in this glut of 

 a favourite food, and to him in his dreams of the waterside 

 the bracken-clock is a cherished symbol of high sport in 

 clear July weather on the hills. 



