166 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



orange tip that has refused and left the lady, not 

 the lady her uncertain suitor. 



Midsummer ! and with it once more the ecstatic 

 spin of the ghost moths ! Three years I have watched 

 the moths in the meadow, and the charm of the mystic 

 thing seems more and more. The same scene each 

 June yet a scene that, for any sense of familiarity 

 there is about it, might be wholly new. But even 

 looking at the thing quite objectively, some incidents 

 or details not noticed before will present themselves 

 each season one watches the ghost moths a-wing. The 

 first evening I watched them last June a strange figure 

 was on the scene. At nine the barn owl came stealing 

 out of the wood-dark to hawk the field like a great 

 spectral swallow. I have seen the nightjar doing this 

 once, but the effect produced by the owl was stranger 

 and more beautiful. Often twisting slightly on the 

 wing, he would flash white as the sea-fowl in the sun ; 

 and, with the moon high and nearly full between 

 egg-shape and perfect round I could watch him from 

 one end of the field to the other, and even see him as 

 a white spot on the fence at the far end, three hundred 

 yards away, when he settled to rest a few minutes. 



It was not a June air or sky, and not June's breath 

 and colour, with the moon gleaming through a rusty 

 zone, and with a hard wind having something of the 

 east ; yet there was a wanness of light and a move- 

 ment that went well enough with the ghost moths' 



