1 84 MY NATURE NOTEBOOK. 



shelter from the midday sun, when the leather-hided 

 buffaloes bury themselves to the tips of their upturned 

 noses in water, and when no large living thing dares 

 to remain exposed to the blistering sun, that would 

 frizzle up a beef-steak in an hour, still you may see 

 tiny little blue butterflies sitting on the scorched 

 stalks of grass, and fluttering now and then along the 

 baking ground, as if the warmth were pleasant. So 

 in winter in England, when the ground is frozen hard 

 and whitened with powdery snow, you may, if a gleam 

 of faint sunlight lasts for a bare half-hour, see a host 

 of filmy gnats gaily dancing in the leeward shelter of 

 a furze bush. They are so flimsy that you can blow 

 the whole crowd aside with one strong breath ; and 

 if one of them chances to be carried against a twig, 

 the trivial collision knocks it all out of shape. But 

 presently it straightens its spectral body, disentangles 

 its cobwebby legs, smoothes its crumpled wings, and 

 is off again to rejoin the gay dance in the air. What 

 is the mysterious speck of life which keeps the gnat 

 lithe and active, while our water-pipes burst with 

 frost? What is it that prevents the infinitesimal drop 

 of moisture in a small butterfly from drying up 

 in midday Indian heat ? 



THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR. 



November 27. When does the year of nature 

 begin ? Spring, of course, is the conventional be- 

 ginning of the year, and winter its end ; but one is 

 often tempted to regard November as the first month 

 of the natural year. With the fall of the leaf all trees 

 turn by common consent to the work of the coming 



