THE MAKERS OF SUMMER. 221 
creatures about than we are conscious of. How strange 
it seems, on a bleak spring day, to see the beautiful pink 
blossom of the apricot or peach covering the grey wall 
with colour—snowflakes in the air at the time! Bright 
petals are so associated with bright sunshine that this 
seems backward and inexplicable, till it is remembered 
that the flower probably opens at the time nearest to 
that which in its own country brings forth the insects 
that frequent it. Now and again humble-bees go by 
with a burr; and it is curious to see the largest of them 
all, the big bombus, hanging to the little green goose- 
berry blossom. MHive-bees, too, are abroad with every 
stray gleam of sun; and perhaps now and then a drone- 
fly—last seen on the blossoms of the ivy in November. 
A yellow butterfly, a white one, afterwards a tortoise- 
shell—then a sudden pause, and no more butterflies for 
some time. The rain comes down, and the gay world 
is blotted out. The wind shifts to the south, and in a 
few days the first swallows are seen and welcomed, but, 
as the old proverb says, they do not make a summer. 
Nor do the long-drawn notes of the nightingale, nor 
even the jolly cuckoo, nor the tree pipit, no, nor even 
the soft coo of the turtle-dove and the smell of the 
May flower. It is too silent even now: there are the 
leading notes; but the undertone—the vibration of the 
organ—is but just beginning. It is the hum of insects 
and their ceaseless flitting that make the summer more 
than the birds or the sunshine. The coming of summer 
is commonly marked in the dates we note by the cuckoo 
and the swallow and the oak leaves ; but till the butter- 
fly and the bee—one with its colour, and one with its 
hum—fill out the fields, the picture is but an outline 
sketch, The insects are the details that make the 
groundwork of a summer day. Till the humble-bees 
