202 WOODLAND IDYLS. 



to take their chances of entering the portals of 

 the great unknown. Why is a mosquito? Does 

 the service of the "wigglers" or larvae as scav- 

 engers offset the worry and nagging which they 

 give to humans when they hum their little bugle 

 call of an advancing charge? 



The buzzard has faced about and gazes at me 

 more intently. He 'may have to wait a long time 

 to pick my bones. As far as I can see he is 

 alone, a solitary black image whose one idea is 

 carrion and death. For minutes at a time he 

 sits and preens himself, at intervals stretching 

 out his neck and gazing down at me; then sit- 

 ting motionless, suberect, with head turned 

 slightly to one side, never moving from the top- 

 most dead branch of tree where he has his aery. 

 At last he sits more erect and gazes around, 

 then flaps his wings and rises aloft to dizzy 

 heights. In far widening circles he soars, his 

 wings seemingly scarcely in motion, yet with a 

 power of cleaving the air possessed by none 

 other of our birds of prey. For fifty minutes 

 he sat and gazed at me, and I at intervals at 

 him, yet but little more, one of the other, do we 

 know. Only akin are we in that we both eat 

 flesh, once grass, to-morrow new matter for 

 some other form of life. So that he does not 

 eat me nor I him, in our flesh-eating adven- 

 tures, all is well between us. 



Glancing again upward I note that a new 



