By-And-By You May See One
More Calling At The Heathbells, And Nothing Else, As In Each Journey They
Visit Only The Flower With Which They Began.
Then there will be quite an
interval before a third bee is seen, and a fourth may be found dead
perhaps on the path, besides which you may not notice any more.
For a
whole hour you may not observe a humble-bee, and the wasp-like
hover-flies, that are generally past all thought of counting, are
scarcely seen. A blue butterfly we found in the dust of the road, without
the spirit to fly, and lifted him into a field to let him have a chance
of life; a few tortoiseshells, and so on - even the white butterflies are
quite uncommon, the whites that used to drift along like snowflakes.
Where are they all? Did the snow kill them? Is there any connection
between the absence of insects and the absence of swallows? If so, how
did the swallows know beforehand, without coming, that there were no
insects for them? Yet the midsummer hum, the deep humming sound in the
atmosphere above, has been loud and persistent over the hayfields, so
that there must have been the usual myriads of the insects that cause
this sound. While I was thinking in this way a swallow alighted on the
turf, picked up a small white moth from among the short grass, and went
off with it. In gloomy overcast weather the swallows at the sea-side
frequently alight on the pebbles of the beach to pick up the insects
which will not rise and fly.
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