14 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



that very Magian worship of the Light ; and in those 

 tents birth had already taken place. Under the Night 

 of winter — under the power of dark Ahriman, the evil 

 spirit of Destruction — lay bud and germ in bondage, 

 waiting for the coming of Ormuzd, the Sun of Light and 

 Summer. Beneath the snow, and in the frozen crevices 

 of the trees, in the chinks of the earth, sealed up by the 

 signet of frost, were the seeds of the life that would re- 

 plenish the air in time to come. The buzzing crowds of 

 summer were still under the snow. 



This forest land is marked by the myriads of insects 

 that roam about it in the days of sunshine. Of all the 

 million million heathbells — multiply them again by a 

 million million more — that purple the acres of rolling 

 hills, mile upon mile, there is not one that is not daily 

 visited by these flying creatures. Countless and incal- 

 culable hosts of the yellow-barred hover-flies come to 

 them ; the heath and common, the moor and forest, the 

 hedgerow and copse, are full of insects. They rise under 

 foot, they rise from the spray brushed by your arm as 

 you pass, they settle down in front of you — a rain of in- 

 sects, a coloured shower. Legion is a little word for the 

 butterflies ; the dry pastures among the woods are brown 

 with meadow-brown ; blues and coppers float in endless 

 succession ; all the nations of Xerxes' army were but a 

 handful to these. In their millions they have perished ; 

 but somewhere, coiled up, as it were, and sealed under 

 the snow, there must have been the mothers and germs 

 of the equally vast crowds that will fill the atmosphere 

 this year. The great humble-bee that shall be mother 

 of hundreds, the yellow wasp that shall be mother of 

 thousands, were hidden there somewhere. The food of 

 the migrant birds that are coming from over sea was 

 there dormant under the snow. Many nations have a 



