2 i2 ROUND THE GREAT WHITE HORSE 



he returned, in broken health and spirits, to become a 

 naturalist, and so to " drive machinery out of his head." 

 The change of ideas so obtained saved his health, and 

 possibly his reason. By day he worked resolutely at 

 his trade. Experience had taught him the value of 

 silence ; and he discouraged gossip by filling his mouth 

 with wooden shoe-pegs, and hammering these one by one 

 into the boot-soles, on the approach of a visitor. At 

 night, " when the wheels began to work in his head," as 

 he afterwards explained, he took his butterfly net, 

 collecting-boxes, and dark lantern, and went out into 

 the lanes to collect moths. His favourite hunting- 

 ground was a dark and little-frequented road, bordered 

 by trees, palings, and thick fences, which was avoided 

 by most of the village people, except by lovers on June 

 evenings. But there are moths to be caught in 

 winter nights as well as in summer, and the shoemaker 

 was as indifferent to solitude and darkness as the owls 

 and nightjars which were his only companions. His 

 garden was soon turned into a butterfly-farm. In it he 

 planted the trees and shrubs whose leaves form the food 

 of the rarer caterpillars, and as soon as the eggs laid by 

 the females were hatched, they were turned out to 

 pasture on the poplars, privets, and alanthus, and 

 protected from the birds by ingeniously made coverings 

 of muslin. One day he discovered that a certain old 

 willow-tree was full of goat-moth caterpillars. This 

 tree he bought "for fuel," and put aside until such 

 time as the perforated trunk yielded a rich harvest of 

 the rare goat-moth chrysalises. The boxes for his 



