IMPRESSIONIST SKETCH 107 



stable, some more unstable. Many a meadow is almost 

 iridescent, we can hardly see the grass for flowers, each is in 

 a sense a fixed sunbeam ; the butterflies flit from blossom to 

 blossom, the sunbeam is in motion again. It is a ceaseless 

 series of transformations of energy. 



That Summer is the time of intensest industry is plain 

 enough even among the plants, but this dominant impression 

 of what Summer means biologically is emphasised when we 

 watch its busy animal life. This is swayed in great part by 

 the twin impulses of Hunger and Love. There is eager 

 endeavour after individual well-being, and there is a not less 

 careful effort which secures the welfare of the young. The 

 former varies from a life and death struggle at the very 

 margin of subsistence to a gay competition in the pursuit of 

 aesthetic luxuries ; and the latter rises from physiologically 

 necessary life-losing and purely instinctive sacrifice to what 

 seems to us affectionate devotion. Whether we look out on 

 plants or animals or men during these Summer months of 

 intense life, the old question rises to our lips, " Warum treibt 

 sich das Volk so und schreit ? " and the answer, funda- 

 mentally true, but changeable within limits for different 

 existences, is ever, " Es will sich ernahren, Kinder zeugen, 

 und die nahren so gut es vermag." 



The activity of ants, bees, wasps, and other insects, 

 represents Summer industry at a higher level than that in 

 the leaves. It is behaviour, instinctive behaviour. By 

 behaviour we mean that the creatures follow out a routine 

 whose individual acts are arranged in effective sequence. 

 By instinctive we mean that the behaviour does not seem 

 to require intelligent control, it is more or less independent 

 of education and experience though it may be improved 

 by both. Most of those activities, which it is one of the 

 delights of Summer to watch, are performed in virtue 

 of inherited cerebral initiatives, if such an ignorance- 



