182 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



the blue ageratum which had tempted the Silver-Y 

 moth with its honey, was brown and shrivelled, one 

 could not help wondering whether the moth had had 

 the good luck overnight to get into a hole where 

 winter's ice-breath would not reach him. Where, too, 

 were the great striped bumble-bees that went droning 

 along the sunny hedges, crusted with glittering 

 blackberries, only the day before ? Where were the 

 bluebottles that had been sunning themselves by 

 scores on the warm tree-trunks ? 



THE LAST SWALLOWS. 



Nay, where were the last of our swallows ? These 

 had been seen so lately as November 10 hawking 

 briskly for flies in the south-west, while even on the 

 bleak east coast though it was very far from " bleak " 

 then the sand-martin had lingered until the 7th. 

 Fortunately, one need seldom despair of the swallows' 

 fate in autumn. In spring, when they come to us 

 before that fickle season has abandoned its wintry 

 caprices; we often see them suffer, -and find them 

 starved by dozens ; but in autumn they have no 

 home-sickness to tempt them further north than 

 weather-wisdom would advise. What we call "our" 

 latest swallows are probably not ours at all, but 

 loitering travellers from the far north, stranded in 

 England by the failing wind that brought them from 

 oversea. They only needed the cold wind to continue 

 their journey by ; and even if they have no premoni- 

 tory sense of coming change, they must ordinarily 

 discover the cold wind before we do. Thus on the 1 5th, 

 though the warm south wind was still blowing upon 



