1 6 Next to the Ground 



Bigger brown ones crawled painfully about 

 the netted clover, too inert to think of homes 

 for their eggs. As yet they were not very 

 plenty. By mid- August there would be mil- 

 lions. Their cousins in golden-yellow, and 

 the gorgeous tawny-orange gentry, spotted' 

 all over with black velvet, began to flutter 

 languidly out of the hedgerows and the corn- 

 field. Now and again a tobacco-fly, belated 

 in his night-ranging, hovered irresolutely 

 above the fresh white trumpets of a vagrant 

 honeysuckle, or the honey-heart of a late wild 

 rose. Humble bees drowsed upon the plumes 

 of early goldenrod. They had slept there all 

 night — perhaps to be ready for work in the 

 morning. 



Possibly it is some dim comprehension of 

 his work's worth which makes the humble bee 

 not humble at all, but the most self-important 

 among winged creatures. Clover is worth, 

 you see, uncounted and unreckonable mil- 

 lions, not merely to the landward folk, but 

 to the world which the landward folk feeds. 

 Without the humble bee and his congeners, 

 clover would never ripen seed. Since the 

 plant is a biennial, no seed would mean its 

 extinction, possibly in ten years : in twenty 

 at the outside. 



The clover-heads, understand, are made up 

 of little trumpet-shaped florets, so curiously 



