74 THE OPEN AIR. 



animation. A swallow went by singing in the air, and 

 as he flew his forked tail was shut, and but one streak 

 of feathers drawn past. Though but young trees, there 

 was a coating of fallen needles under the firs an inch 

 thick, and beneath it the dry earth touched warm. A 

 fern here and there came up through it, the palest of 

 pale green, quite a different colour to the same species 

 growing in the hedges away from the copse. A yellow 

 fungus, streaked with scarlet as if blood had soaked 

 into it, stood at the foot of a tree occasionally. Black 

 fungi, dry, shrivelled, and dead, lay fallen about, 

 detached from the places where they had grown, and 

 crumbling if handled. Still more silent after sunset, 

 the wood was utterly quiet; the swallows no longer 

 passed twittering, the willow- wren was gone, there was 

 no hum or rustle ; the wood was as silent as a shadow. 



But before the darkness a song and an answer 

 arose in a tree, one bird singing a few notes and 

 another replying side by side. Two goldfinches sat 

 on the cross of a larch-fir and sang, looking towards 

 the west, where the light lingered. High up, the 

 larch-fir boughs with the top shoot form a cross ; on 

 this one goldfinch sat, the other was immediately 

 beneath. At even the birds often turn to the west 

 as they sing. 



Next morning the August sun shone, and the wood 

 was all a-hum with insects. The wasps were working 

 at the pine boughs high overhead; the bees by dozens 

 were crowding to the bramble flowers ; swarming on 

 them, they seemed so delighted ; humble-bees went 

 wandering among the ferns in the copse and in the 

 ditches — they sometimes alight on fern — and calling 



