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THE MAKERS OF SUMMER. 223 
carried on as at the edge of that seaweed ; they moved 
a bushel of it. To the eye there seemed nothing in it 
but here and there a small white worm ; but they found 
plenty, and the weather being so bitter, I let them do 
much as they liked; I would rather feed than starve 
them. 
Down at the sea-shore in the sunny hours, out from 
the woodwork of the groynes or bulwarks, there came a 
white spotted spider, which must in some way have 
known the height to which the tide came at that season, 
because he was far below high-water mark. The moles 
in an upland field had made in the summer a perfect 
network of runs. Out of curiosity we opened some, 
and found in them large brown pupz. In the summer- 
house, under the wooden eaves, if you look, you will find 
the chrysalis of a butterfly, curiously slung aslant. 
Coming down Galley Hill, near Hastings, one day, a 
party was almost stopped by finding they could only 
walk on thousands of caterpillars, dark with bright 
yellow bands, which had sprung out of the grass. The 
great nettles—now, nothing is so common as a nettle— 
are sometimes festooned with a dark caterpillar, hun- 
dreds upon each plant, hanging like bunches of currants 
Could you find a spot the size of your watch-seal 
without an insect or the germ of one? 
The agriculturists in some southern counties give 
the boys in spring threepence a dozen for the heads of 
young birds killed in the nest. The heads are torn off, 
to be produced, like the wolves’ of old times, as evidence 
of extinction. This—apart from the cruelty of the 
practice—is, I think, a mistake, for, besides the insects 
that injure crops, there are some which may be suspected 
of being inimical to human life, if not directly, indirectly ; 
and if it were not for birds, we should run a very good 
