BUTTERFLIES FROM AMERICA 171 



lucky enough to come upon a host of Painted Ladies and 

 a good many Humming Bird hawk moths as they 

 arrived on the coast of North Devon. It was strange to 

 find these rather rare and quite wonderful creatures 

 among the rocks of the seashore. Many people have 

 been a little incredulous about the extent of insect migra 

 tion ; but if within one season thirty Monarchs from 

 America are found on the West Coast of England, it 

 becomes easy to believe that any weak-winged butterfly, 

 or even moth, might cross the Channel if the wind and 

 its mood were favourable. 



3- 



The wife of an agricultural worker in a little Oxford 

 hamlet spoke to some of us with lyrical regret of the days 

 when the path, now crossing a grass field, led between 

 plains of yellow corn. In her mind as in most of our 

 minds, and in literature, harvest is a thing and a word 

 belonging to wheat, and therefore to autumn ; yet there 

 is little in the least autumnal about the cutting of the 

 first fields of oats. Often enough it begins in Southern 

 England just before mid- July ; when summer is full of its 

 proper juices, when the sap is active in the tree and the 

 rough border by the hedgerow side and the roadside is 

 still growing in depth and in colour. The song of the 

 robin keeps its spring merriment, and the note of the 

 greenfinch has not wholly sunk to the drawling wheeze 

 that labours to express the dusty desiccations of August. 

 Summer still &quot; slept in the fire of the odorous gorse- 

 blossom &quot; if not in &quot; the hot scent of the briar.&quot; We 

 may say, perhaps, that the oat harvest is summery, or 

 part of it, and the wheat harvest autumnal. For in the 

 English continuity of the festival shared throughout by 



