152 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



the stars were made to light our night, the flowers 

 to minister to our sense of beauty, the fruits and 

 springs to refresh us. We have given up that idea, 

 but have nothing that quite fills the gap. 



The peewit is our constant uneasy companion in 

 these water meadows. But the great peewit scene 

 is at dusk or dark. In March and April the peewits 

 that are nesting about the drier patches and hum- 

 mocks of the marsh will have a wild assembly, 

 not only on bright days, but through moon or star-lit 

 nights. It seems so natural that such scenes of 

 night beauty should appeal to creatures inspired 

 with the romance and rapture of the season of 

 courtship and show. Thus at midsummer we think 

 the dancing place and hour of the ghost moths 

 perfectly in keeping with the occasion the sensuous 

 June evening, in the scented dusk, when the evening 

 star was waxing as the afterglow faded slowly out, 

 the beginning of a Midsummer Night's Dream. 



Peewits often assemble, then, for their revel at 

 the marsh on just the lovely night we might choose 

 for an open-air play. Yet what are to us beauty 

 of time and place considerations do not influence 

 the peewit. He may be a little livelier on a brilliant 

 moonlight night, because the light keeps him wakeful, 

 but there is little to show that he enjoys such 

 conditions of light and weather more than he enjoys 

 the gloomiest gloomiest, that is, to us evening in 

 February. Such a gloom settled on the fields and 



