A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 33 
aureole—verily as though some merry will-o’-the-wisp, tired of his 
dancing, had perched him there, while other luminous spires rise 
above the mist, or here and there hover in Jambent banks be- ! 
yond, or, like those throbbing fires beneath the ocean surge, 
illume the fog with half-smothered halo. This lustrous tuft at 
our elbow! Let us turn our lantern upon it. Its nightly whorl 
of lamps is already lit, save one or two that have escaped our , 
fairy in his rounds, but not for long, for the green veil of this 
sunset bud is now rent from base to tip. The confined folded 
petals are pressing hard for their release. In a moment more, 
with an audible impulse, the green apex bursts asunder, and the 
four freed sepals slowly refiex against the hollow tube of the 
flower, while the lustrous corolla shakes out its folds, saluting the ' 
air with its virgin breath. 
The slender stamens now explore the gloom, and hang their 2 
festoons of webby pollen across their tips. None too soon, for 
even now a silvery moth circles about the blossom, and settles 
among the out-stretched filaments, sipping the nectar in tremulous ? 
content. But he carries a precious token as he hies away, a 
golden necklace, perhaps, and with it a message to yonder blos-° 
som among the alders, and thus until the dawn, his rounds di- 
rected with a deep design of which he is an innocent instrument, , 
but which insures a perpetual paradise of primroses for future 
sippers like himself. 
Nor is it necessary to visit the haunt of the evening primrose 
to observe this beautiful episode. The same may be witnessed 
almost any summer evening much nearer home, even about your 
porch, and among city walls, heralded by those fresh, dewy whiffs 
from the night-blooming honeysuckle, where the bright bevies of 
blushing buds are bursting in anticipation of that “kiss which | 
harms not,” as the welcome sphinx-moth, piloted by the two great. 
glowing lanterns of its eyes, hovers in the murmurous cloud oi 
its humming phantom-wings. How often have I watched these 
mimic humming-birds in the gathering dusk, whirling about the 
flowers, following the circuit of each fresh-blown cluster, tilting ° 
and swaying in their buoyant poise above the blossom’s throat, 
5 
