96 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
cawing of the rooks is incessant, a kind of autumn festi- 
val. It scems so natural that the events of the year 
should be met with asong. But somehow a very hard and 
unobservant spirit has got abroad into our rural life, and 
people do not note things as the old folk did. They do 
not mark the coming of the swallows, nor any of the 
dates that make the woodland almanack. It is a pity 
that there should be such indifference—that the harsh 
ways of the modern town should press so heavily on the 
country. This summer, too, there seems a marked 
absence of bees, butterflies, and other insects in the 
fields. One bee will come along, calling at every head 
of white clover. By-and-by you may see one more 
calling at the heathbells, and nothing else, as in each 
journey they visit only the flower with which they 
began. Then there will be quite an interval before a 
third bee is seen, and a fourth may be found dead 
perhaps on the path, besides which you may not notice 
any more. For a whole hour you may not observe a 
humble-bee, and the wasp-like hover-flies, that are 
generally past all thought of counting, are scarcely seen, 
A blue butterfly we found in the dust of the road, with- 
out the spirit to fly, and lifted him into a field to let 
him have a chance of life; a few tortoiseshells, and so 
on—even the white butterflies are quite uncommon, the 
whites that used to drift along like snowflakes. Where 
are they all? Did the snow kill them? Is there any 
connection between the absence of insects and the 
absence of swallows? If so, how did the swallows 
know beforehand, without coming, that there were no 
insects for them? Yet the midsummer hum, the deep 
humming sound in the atmosphere above, has been loud 
and persistent over the hayfields, so that there must 
have been the usual mvriads of the insects that caus¢ 
