96 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



cawing of the rooks is incessant, a kind of autumn festi- 

 val. It seems so natural that the events of the year 

 should be met with a song. But somehow a very hard and 

 unobservant spirit has got abroad into our rural life, and 

 people do not note things as the old folk did. They do 

 not mark the coming of the swallows, nor any of the 

 dates that make the woodland almanack. It is a pity 

 that there should be such indifference — that the harsh 

 ways of the modern town should press so heavily on the 

 country. This summer, too, there seems a marked 

 absence of bees, butterflies, and other insects in the 

 fields. One bee will come along, calling at every head 

 of white clover. By-and-by you may see one more 

 calling at the heathbells, and nothing else, as in each 

 journey they visit only the flower with which they 

 began. Then there will be quite an interval before a 

 third bee is seen, and a fourth may be found dead 

 perhaps on the path, besides which you may not notice 

 any more. For a whole hour you may not observe a 

 humble-bee, and the wasp-like hover-flies, that are 

 generally past all thought of counting, are scarcely seen. 

 A blue butterfly we found in the dust of the road, with- 

 out the spirit to fly, and lifted him into a field to let 

 him have a chance of life ; a few tortoiseshells, and so 

 on — even the white butterflies are quite uncommon, the 

 whites that used to drift along like snowflakes. Where 

 are they all ? Did the snow kill them ? Is there any 

 connection between the absence of insects and the 

 absence of swallows ? If so, how did the swallows 

 know beforehand, without coming, that there were no 

 insects for them? Yet the midsummer hum, the deep 

 humming sound in the atmosphere above, has been loud 

 and persistent over the hayfields, so that there must 

 have been the usual myriads of the insects that cause 



