APRIL. 61 



of Gibraltar ; but since it is the habit of their kind 

 all over the temperate zone to sleep through the 

 winter in some crevice, they would gain very little by 

 travelling a thousand miles only to sleep at the end 

 of their journey, as they could have done at home. 

 Thus they occupy a very different position from that 

 of the swallows, who must migrate or die ; and the 

 occasional discovery of large lumps of sleeping bats, 

 hundreds being sometimes crammed together in one 

 place, suggests that many more hibernate than appear 

 abroad in early spring. Indeed, it is one of those 

 nice adjustments of nature which so neatly match 

 cause with effect as to encourage belief in the theory 

 of design, that in early spring, when there are very 

 few insects on the wing in the evening, very few bats 

 should be abroad to eat them ; but as the insects 

 multiply, more and more bats appear. 



A RECOLLECTION. 



April 19. Spring has arrived, and any one of us 

 may now wander afield with fair hope of seeing 

 swallows, hearing the cuckoo, and, if he direct his 

 steps aright, listening to the nightingale also. But 

 this happens to be the one day in the year when a 

 little English wild-flower may be allowed to monopo- 

 lize our thoughts : for the primrose on Primrose Day 

 is absent from the thoughts and buttonholes of 

 few. Twenty-one years ago from yesterday elieu 

 fugaces /I stood on the wind - swept Brighton 

 Downs, where large bodies of Volunteers were going 

 through manoeuvres which would probably fill their 

 successors of to-day with mild surprise. 



