168 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



at the outlet of the estuary, and the classified by the naturalist and how 



lad, who dangles his paternoster from beautiful the hue and sheen of their 



the jetty head, learn of the wonders scales ! 



of the ocean and the ways of the fish It is good, then, to be a lover of 



that play therein. The sea is a huge, the angle, to pry intimately into the 



restless, ever-varying companion of mysteries of the waters, to breathe 



the angler, more stimulating than the the thin air of the moorlands, to 



staid river or the brooding mere. It taste the intoxication of the salt sea, 



inspires also a kind of fear that fasci- to watch the moods of the seasons by 



nates as we gaze over the vast grey the riverside, to set one's cunning 



space from an anchored skiff in a against the intelligence of fish, and to 



lonely bay. How weird, too, are many know the contentment that attends 



of its natives numbers of them hardly upon a simple pleasure. 



XXXIV 



PEARL SKIPPERS 



"The fly buzz'd up in the heat." 



T)UNCTUAL almost to a day I skipper in size and in one or two finer 

 found my lovely little pearl details. I have only seen him alive- 

 skippers at their prime on the hill-side so alive too ! on his native down ; 

 where I watched them last August, never in the cork-lined box, nor wish 

 Roughly, pearl skipper is large skipper, to ; and he is not very easy to get 

 plus a set of natty, four-sided figures, quite close to ; but, judging by what 

 tessellated work, that are imprinted on I have seen of him on a blossom about 

 the upper and under sides of his wings, a yard off, his horns are not ringed 

 These light-coloured marks had the with white, and he wants the faint 

 naming of the butterfly been mine, I flush of purple on the lower wings 

 should not have suggested pearls which his cousin has. 

 are his chief distinction, but I fancy He is a gem, though he does not 

 he also differs slightly from the large flash with gemmy colours ; is of the 



