though it is usual to speak of wild
birds and of their freedom, the more you watch their ways the more you
feel that the wildest have their routes and customs: that they do not
act entirely from the impulse of the moment, but have their unwritten
laws. How do the gnats there playing under the horse-chestnut boughs
escape being struck down by the heavy raindrops, each one of which
looks as if it would drown so small a creature? The numbers of insects
far exceed all that words can express: consider the clouds of midges
that often dance over a stream. One day, chancing to glance at a
steeple, I saw what looked like thin smoke issuing from the top of it.
Now it shot out in a straight line from the gilded beak of the
weathercock, now veered about, or declined from the vane. It was an
innumerable swarm of insects, whose numbers made them visible at that
height.

Some insects are much more powerful than would be supposed. A garden
was enclosed with fresh palings formed of split oak so well seasoned
(split oak is the hardest of wood) that it was difficult to train any
creepers against them, for a nail could not be driven in without the
help of a bradawl. Passing along the path one afternoon I heard a
peculiar rasping sound like a very small saw at work, and found it
proceeded from four wasps biting the oak for the materials of their
nest. The noise they made was audible four or five yards away, and
upon looking closer I found the palings all scored and marked in short
shallow grooves. The scores and marks extended along that part of the
palings where the sunshine usually fell; there were none on the shady
side, the wasps preferring to work in the sunlight.

Soon the clouds began to break, and then the sun shone on innumerable
rain-drops. I at once started forth, knowing that such a storm is
often followed by several lesser showers with brief intervals between.
The deserted ice-house was rarely visited--only, perhaps, when some
borage was wanted to put in summer drinks. For a thick growth of
borage had sprung up by it, where perhaps a small garden patch had
once been cultivated, for there was a pear-tree near. The plant, with
its scent of cucumber, grew very strong; the blue flowers when fallen,
if they had not been observed when growing, might be supposed to have
been inserted exactly upside down to their real manner of attachment.
In autumn the leaves of the pear-tree reddened, and afterwards the ivy
over the entrance to th