86 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



days I tried, by moistening it, by putting it out in 

 the sun and wind, and in other ways, to bring back 

 the light, but did not succeed ; and, convinced at 

 length that it would shine no more, I had the feel- 

 mg that life had at last gone out of that dry, dusty 

 fragment. 



The little summer tragedies in Nature which we 

 see or notice are very few not one in a thousand 

 of those that actually take place about us in a spot 

 like this, teeming with midsummer life. A second 

 one, which impressed me at the time, had for its 

 scene a spot not more than eight minutes' walk 

 from that forest gate where the stag-beetle, too long 

 in cooling his wrath, had been overtaken by so 

 curious a destiny. But before I relate this other 

 tragedy, I must describe the place and some of the 

 creatures I met there. It was a point where heath 

 and wood meet, but do not mingle ; where the marshy 

 stream that drains the heath flows down into the 

 wood, and the boggy ground sloping to the water 

 is overgrown with a mixture of plants of different 

 habits lovers of a dry soil and of a wet heather 

 and furze, coarse and fine grasses, bracken and bog 

 myrtle ; and in the wettest spots there were patches 

 and round masses of rust-red and orange-yellow and 

 pale-grey lichen, and a few fragrant, shining, yellow 

 stars of the bog asphodel, although its flowering 

 season was nearly over. It was a perfect wilderness, 



