124 MY DEVON YEAR 



our knowledge ; but among the excellent contrivances 

 of flowering plants it may be that scent has a 

 greater part than we can prove in summoning their 

 winged, hymeneal servants. The glittering hosts are 

 busy here, and the drone and under-song of them 

 comes to the ear at any moment when the birds are 

 silent. Ichneumons — soldier-like, shining and quick 

 as lightning — do their strange duty upon the many- 

 footed, fleshy things that are always hungry and would 

 eat up all — to the last rose-petal, but for these stern 

 workers. The honey-gatherers make varied music, 

 from the or^an-note of the humble-bee to the hiorher- 

 pitched song of the hive workers. They leave few 

 flowers untried ; toil at the next blossom to that 

 whereon vanessa opens her fairy wings ; labour 

 in the heart of the roses ; tumble upon the golden 

 tutsan ; test the dandelion and convolvulus, the lurid 

 spikes of stachys, and the sprays of the vetches 

 all purple and gold. They scatter the may and 

 cherry, and break down the frail petals of the blue- 

 eyed flax. By night the bright flies and bees and 

 butterflies cease from their cares, and then comes 

 the moth-time, and dim, soft things seek the white 

 campion's nocturnal eyes, or the pale trumpets of 

 the moon-creeper. Great shard-borne beetles boom 

 past upon their business in the open ; the sphinx- 

 moth passes like a mystery ; the churn-owl makes his 

 strange song ; the bats squeak aloft and hunt the 

 chafers around the fir trees. Dor-beetles maintain a 

 crisp throb of sound, and the glow-worm lights a little 



