The Face of the Wilderness 291 



of its lethargy that lasts from October until 

 May. 



In its lurking-places for beast and bird, and its 

 wealth of wild, unprofitable plants which culture 

 has elsewhere eradicated, such a tract of ancient fen 

 provides a rare asylum for many forms of life which 

 grow rarer and rarer on the tended soil. Among the 

 moths which shimmer beside the reed-pools in the 

 twilight of the late June evenings are some, now 

 almost extinct, which once abounded in the fen- 

 land wildernesses, when the plants on which they 

 depend were widely distributed through the land. 

 The swallowtail, which divides with the purple 

 emperor of the oak forests the pre-eminence among 

 British butterflies, is now seen only in a few marsh 

 and river- side districts, where the food of the cater- 

 pillar still lingers. But in earlier days it was per- 

 haps as abundant in England as the white butter- 

 fly of modern cabbage-gardens was rare. 



The dense reed-beds and wet, waste feeding- 

 grounds are still the refuge of many of our scarcer 

 breeding birds, though of lost British species most 

 were marsh-birds too large and wild to brook the 

 restriction of their haunts. The lesser redpoll, 

 smallest of our finches, often breeds in the shrubby 

 islets of the fen, though, unlike the true marsh- 

 birds, it is by no means incapable of prospering in 

 the nesting season elsewhere. Its small and shapely 

 nest, thick felted with willow-silk and the seed- 

 down torn from bulrush-heads, is one of the most 

 distinctive of their treasures. The dense beds of 

 reed form the favourite haunt of the shy and seldom- 



