The
chimney-swallows were not so late, but even they are not so numerous as
usual.
The swifts seem to have come more in their accustomed numbers.
Now, the swallows are, of all others, the summer birds. As well suppose
the trees without leaves as the summer air without swallows. Ever since
of old time the Greeks went round from house to house in spring singing
the swallow song, these birds have been looked upon as the friends of
man, and almost as the very givers of the sunshine.
The swallow's come, winging
His way to us here;
Fair hours is he bringing,
And a happy new year!
They had a song for everything, the mill song, the reapers' song, just as
in Somerset, the apple country, they still have a cider song, or perhaps,
rather, an orchard song. Such rhymes might well be chanted about the hay
and the wheat, or at the coming of the green leaf, or the yellowing of
the acorns, when the cawing of the rooks is incessant, a kind of autumn
festival. It seems so natural that the events of the year should be met
with a song. But somehow a very hard and unobservant spirit has got
abroad into our rural life, and people do not note things as the old folk
did. They do not mark the coming of the swallows, nor any of the dates
that make the woodland almanack. It is a pity that there should be such
indifference - that the harsh ways of the modern town should press so
heavily on the country. This summer, too, there seems a marked absence of
bees, butterflies, and other insects in the fields. One bee will come
along, calling at every head of white clover. 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.
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