ABOVE THE BIRDS 49 



as I was by my ignorance. Probably I shall 

 never have a beetle, mucli less a moth, named 

 after me ; but with that precious black-and-white 

 rarity in mind I feel that even in the way of 

 entomology I have not lived altogether in vain. 



Scientific studies apart, the best hours of the 

 week (after some spent along the carriage-road, 

 resting here and there upon a boulder to enjoy 

 the magnificent, ever-shifting prospect, and some 

 — not hours, alas, but minutes — spent in eat- 

 ing the ambrosial, banana-savored, soul-satisfying 

 berries of Vaccinium ccespitosurn) — my best 

 hours, I say, were perhaps those of a certain won- 

 derful evening. The air was warm, no breath 

 stirring, the sky clear, and the half world below 

 us, as we walked the hotel platform, lay covered 

 with white clouds, on which the full moon was 

 shining. The stillness, the mildness, the bright- 

 ness, the sense of elevation, and the bewitching, 

 unearthly scene, aU this was like an evening in 

 fairyland. For the time being, it is to be feared, 

 even the rarest of moths would have seemed a 

 matter of secondary importance. Such is the 

 power of beauty. So truly was it bom to make 

 other things forgotten. 



