14 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
that very Magian worship of the Light; and in those 
tents birth had already taken place. Under the Night 
of winter—under the power of dark Ahriman, the evil 
spirit of Destruction—lay bud and germ in bondage; 
waiting for the coming of Ormuzd, the Sun of Light and 
Summer. Beneath the snow, and in the frozen crevices 
of the trees, in the chinks of the earth, sealed up by the 
signet of frost, were the seeds of the life that would re- 
plenish the air in time to come. ‘The buzzing crowds of 
summer were still under the snow. 
This forest land is marked by the myriads of insects 
that roam about it in the days of sunshine. Of all the 
million million heathbells—multiply them again by a 
million million more—that purple the acres of rolling 
hills, mile upon mile, there is not one that is not daily 
visited by these flying creatures. Countless and incal- 
culable hosts of the yellow-barred hover-flies come to 
them ; the heath and common, the moor and forest, the 
hedgerow and copse, are full of insects. They rise under 
foot, they rise from the spray brushed by your arm as 
you pass, they settle down in front of you—a rain of in- 
sects, a coloured shower. Legion is a little word for the 
butterflies ; the dry pastures among the woods are brown 
with meadow-brown ; blues and coppers float in endless 
succession ; all the nations of Xerxes’ army were but a 
handful tothese. In their millions they have perished ; 
but somewhere, coiled up, as it were, and sealed under 
the snow, there must have been the mothers and germs 
of the equally vast crowds that will fill the atmosphere 
this year. The great humble-bee that shall be mother 
of hundreds, the yellow wasp that shall be mother of 
thousands, were hidden there somewhere. The food of 
the migrant birds that are coming from over sea was 
tie.e dormant under the snow. Many nations have a 
