\ 

 134 BIRDS IN A DISMAL SUMMER 



No wind-wafted immigrants these, but glossy, swift- 

 winged beauties fresh from the chrysalis, feasting with 

 Red Admirals and Lesser Tortoiseshells on the asters 

 and large stonecrop as late as mid- October. 



XXXIV 



The caprice of British meteorology was never dis- 

 played with more striking effect than in the 



Birds in a J 



Dismal summer of 1912. In the previous year the 

 land lay gasping under such a drought as the 

 present generation had never experienced in these 

 islands ; water supplies were exhausted in all parts, and 

 green pasture seemed a fair dream of the past. And 

 what is England without her verdure ? 



' Green fields of England ! wheresoe'er 

 Across the watery waste we fare, 

 Your image in our hearts wo bear, 

 Green fields of England, everywhere.' 



A torrid summer was followed by a winter mild almost 

 beyond any in memory, with copious floods, interrupted 

 by two or three nights of intense frost at the beginning 

 of February 1912, enough to wreak ruin upon many 

 choice growths that had been lured into precocious 

 activity by the warmth and wet of Christmastide. The 

 ' sweet o' the year ' gave us fair promise, May being a 

 lovely month of warmth and sunshine ; but before its 

 close, the clouds stooped low, and we saw the face of 

 Phoebus no more. The very dog-days, which should be 

 the hottest of the year, owing to the earth being unable 

 in the short nights to shed one day's heat before the 



