Summer's Afterglow 249 



last. The guttural but unmistakable reproduction 

 brings back from the very antipodes of the year the 

 picture of the broad wings tumbling and tossing 

 above the grassy nesting-ground, and all the 

 heartening tumult of the April days. The starling 

 reproduces the call of spring in the tone of a minia- 

 ture phonograph, and glides forthwith into a medley 

 of his own queer, musical jargon. But the spring 

 seems to be brought nearer for a moment by his 

 repetition of such a special call than by all the 

 music of the song-thrush, which he pours out now 

 and in spring alike. 



Man's own recollections of spring, as he traverses 

 the fields and hillsides under St. Martin's sun, come 

 chiefly by force of contrast. Where the grey- 

 backed fieldfares from overseas make a winter 

 clamour in the branches of the red-hawed thorn 

 upon the down, the vision comes up before us of 

 the same bush tufted in April with newborn green, 

 or foaming in early June on all its boughs with the 

 blossom that poured fragrance down the dancing 

 hillside air. Such a contrast in the aspect of a 

 single bush seems to sunder the spring from this 

 present moment of the year by a far greater gulf 

 of time than we feel when away from the fields ; 

 and it is the spectacle of winter change in such a 

 concrete form that gives most force to the tempta- 

 tion to regard the autumnal period of decay as a 

 time when nature is fraught with unhappiness and 

 the world is ill at ease. As the days shorten and 

 the cold increases, there is a natural and primitive 

 tendency in man to regard the earth itself as sharing 



