OUTSIDE LONDON. 247 



there grew thousands of poppies, fifty times more 

 poppies than cabbage, so that the pale green of the 

 cabbage-leaves was hidden by the scarlet petals 

 i'alling wide open to the dry air. There was a broad 

 band of scarlet colour all along the side of the field, 

 and it was this which brought me to the shade of 

 those particular elms. The use of the cabbages was 

 in this way: they fetched for me all the white 

 butterflies of the neighbourhood, and they fluttered, 

 hundreds and hundreds of white butterflies, a 

 constant stream and flow of them over the broad 

 band of scarlet. Humble-bees came too; bur-bur- 

 bur; and the buzz, and the flutter of the white 

 wings over those fixed red butterflies the poppies, 

 the flutter and sound and colour pleased me in the 

 dry heat of the day. Sometimes I set my camp- 

 stool by a humble-bee's nest. I like to see and hear 

 them go in and out, so happy, busy and wild ; the 

 humble-bee is a favourite. That summer their nests 

 were very plentiful; but although the heat might 

 have seemed so favourable to them, the flies were 

 not at all numerous, I mean out-of-doors. Wasps, 

 on the contrary, flourished to an extraordinary 

 degree. One willow tree particularly took their 

 fancy; there was a swarm in the tree for weeks, 

 attracted by some secretion; the boughs and leaves 

 were yellow with wasps. But it seemed curious that 

 flies should not be more numerous than u&ual; they 

 are dying now fast enough, except a few of the large 

 ones, that still find some sugar in the flowers of the 

 ivy. The finest show of ivy flower is among some 

 yew trees; the dark ivy has filled the dark yew tiej, 



