134 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



dragon -flies in rushing hordes and clouds, and in 

 masses clinging like swarming bees to the trees ; here 

 we see them as single insects, but I once witnessed a 

 beautiful effect produced by a large number of the 

 common turquoise blue dragon-fly gathered at one spot, 

 and this was in Hampshire. I was walking, and after 

 passing a night at a hamlet called Buckhorn Oak, in 

 Alice Holt Forest, I went next morning, on a Sunday, 

 to the nearest church, at the small village of Rutledge. 

 It was a very bright windy morning in June, and the 

 oak woods had been stripped of their young foliage 

 by myriads of caterpillars, so that the sunlight fell 

 untempered through the seemingly dead trees on the 

 bracken that covered the ground below. Now, at one 

 spot over an area of about half an acre, the bracken 

 was covered with the common turquoise blue dragon- 

 fly, clinging to the fronds, their heads to the wind, 

 their long bodies all pointing the same way. They 

 were nowhere close together, but very evenly distri- 

 buted, about three to six inches apart, and the sight 

 of the numberless slips of gem-like blue sprinkled over 

 the billowy vivid green fern was a rare and exceed- 

 ingly lovely one. 



After writing of the lovely haunters of the twilight, 

 and that noblest one of all 



The great goblin moth who bears 



Between his wings the ruined eyes of death, 



and the angel butterfly, and the uncanny dragon-flies 

 the flying serpents in their splendour it may seem 



