BEGINNING OF SUMMER. 
87 
of liis solicituile were the pupa-cases of a species of 
moth. When I humbly desired to know the use to 
which these accumulated grubs were to be put, the 
face of the old man relaxed into a smile, and he did 
his best to assume the appearance of a duck gob- 
bling up imaginary fat grubs with impatient greedi- 
ness and noise. From this pantomime I gathered 
that he was collecting food for his ducks ; for this 
is one of the several ways which they have of 
fattening ducks in China. 
In the beginning of summer, when the Principia 
utilis, which in winter time is nothing but a tangled 
mass of green thorns, teems with milk-white Howers, 
and swanns with bees ; when the edges of the 
narrow paths are gay wi^ the white and pink 
coronals of AnthyUis, about which wasps are Hying, 
vigilant and bustling ; when in all waste places the 
blue flowers of Veronica mingle with the milk-white 
stars of Stellaria, and in the far* distance a puce- 
coloured mass of peach blossoms contrasts with the 
green willows ; when those long-beaked hairy flies, 
the bombylii, hover over the hob narrow paths, like 
