MIXED DAYS OF MAY AND DECEMBER. 2:7 
not had any settled, soft, warm weather till after mid- 
summer. There has been a steady continual cold draught 
from the northward till the sun reached the solstice, so 
that the summers, in fact, have not commenced till the 
end of June. There is a good deal of general truth in 
this observation ; certainly we seem to have lost our 
springs. I do not think I have heard it thunder this 
year up to the time of writing. The absence of electri- 
cal disturbance shows a peculiar state of atmosphere 
unfavourable to growth, so that the corn will not, hide a 
partridge, and in some places hardly a sparrow. Where 
did the painters get their green leaves from this year in 
-time for the galleries? Not from the trees, for they had 
none. 
A flock of rooks was waddling about in a. thinly 
grown field of corn which scarcely hid their feet, and a 
number of swallows, flying very low, scarcely higher than 
the rooks’ breasts, wound in and out among them. The 
day was cloudy and cold, and probably the insects had 
settled on the ground. ‘The rooks’ feet stirred them up, 
and as they rose they were taken by the swallows. All 
over the field there were no other swallows, nor in the ad- 
jacent fields, only in that one spot where the rooks were 
feeding. On another occasion swallows flying low over 
a closely cropped grass field alighted on the sward to try 
and catch their prey. There seems a scarcity of some 
kinds of insect life, due doubtless to the wind. Out of a 
dozen butterfly chrysalids collected, six were worthless ; 
they were stiff, and when opened were stuffed full of small 
white larvee, which had eaten away the coming butterfly 
in its shell. They were the offspring of a parasite insect, 
which thus provided for the sustenance of its young by 
eating up other young, after the cruel way ofnature. Why 
does one robin carefully choosea thatched eave for its nest, 
