226 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
peach and apricot, pink without a green leaf; the 
pear tree white, but the leaves come quickly ; the apple, 
an acre of pink and white, with the merest texture of 
foliage. Nor are there many conspicuous green insects— 
the grasshopper; some green flies; the lace-fly, a green 
body and delicate white wings. With the wild flowers, 
on the contrary, there seems to come a great deal of 
green. There is scarcely a colour that cannot be 
matched in the gay world of wings. Red, blue, and 
yellow, and brown and purple—shaded and_ toned, 
relieved with dots and curious markings; in the butter- 
flies, night tints in the pattern of the under wings, as 
if these were shaded with the dusk of the evening, being 
in shadow under the vane. Gold and orange, red, bright 
scarlet, and ruby and bronze in the flies. Dark velvci, 
brown velvet, greys, amber, and gold edgings like mili- 
tary coats in the wild becs. If fifteen or twenty delicate 
plates of the thinnest possible material, each tinted 
differently, were placed one over the other, and all 
translucent, perhaps they might produce something of 
that singular shadow-painting seen on the wings of 
moths. They are the shadows of the colours, and yet 
they are equally distinct. The thin edges of the flies’ 
wings catch the sunbeams, and throw them aside. 
Look, too, at the bees’ limbs, which are sometimes 
yellow, and sometimes orange-red with pollen. The 
cyes, too, of many insects are coloured. They know 
your shadow from that of acloud. If a cloud comes 
over, the instant the edge of the shadow reaches the 
Grass moths they stop, so do some of the butterflies and 
other insects, as the wild bees remain quiescent. As 
the edge of your shadow falls on them they rise and fly, 
so that to observe them closely it must not be allowed 
to overlap them. 
