THE FIRST BREATH. 93 



drip from the loaded pine; when the sunny slopes 

 begin to reek with the earliest evaporation, and little 

 pools to cream and mantle in the hollows of the trodden 

 snow, how jocund the most tiny things in nature come 

 forth to enjoy themselves, as if even the deceptive sun- 

 beam of a January noon were too precious to be lost to 

 a world dependent on the sun. Under the shelter of 

 the dark wall, or the leafless bush, where direct, re- 

 flected, and radiated heat combine, and mimic rainbows 

 sport in the rising vapour, the little tipulidce, and cu- 

 lices, bring out their mazy phalanx, and as they flit, 

 now up, now down, now right, now left, their wings are 

 little points of prismatic hues, as if the rising rainbows 

 were consolidated ; and there they wanton, till a cloud 

 passes over the sun, or a gust of wind passes over the 

 place of their sporting, and then they go, no one knows 

 where. Sometimes an insect, of a little more volume, 

 will try its solitary path, the winter moth (geometria 

 brumaria), or the earliest moth of the spring (geometria 

 primaria) ; but if these shall escape the birds, of which 

 even some granivorous kinds hawk for insects at this 

 season, they are soon laid lifeless upon the snow. 

 Even a solitary wasp or bee, which had taken up its 

 hybernating retreat in a southern chink or crevice, ex- 

 posed to the ready action of the heat, will buzz abroad 

 in fond expectation of the expanded calyx, and the 

 luscious nectary. In situations where the cold air does 

 not settle down till the night be well advanced, and 

 where there is no diurnal transfer of air from land to 

 land, this is apt to be the case, especially after the middle 

 of January, the common bat (vesper tillio murinus) 

 leaves its winter retreat, and twitters about night-fall. 



