COUNTRY LIFE
Aftermaths Nothing is more potent to make you forget the less good and pleasant events of today than "the royal aspects of the earth "; and war-years, which have the reputation of being the great wine-years, have endowed our English world with most abundant sources of lethe. The berried hedgerows ; the stubbles so lush with clOver that the barren spikes of straw are quite invisible ; the knee-high aftermath that is giving a second crop of hay (for the silo) ; the gardens bright with flowers almost beyond prece- dent—these and innumerable other charms of the country have been seen under sunset skies more splendid than all the colours of autumn. An exceptional little wonder for the naturalist near London has been the unparalleled number (at least within my experience) of those loveliest of insects, the autumnal butterflies— not only Admiral, Peacock and Tortoise-shell, but the quaint Comma. I have never seen any at so late a date—there were quite as many as ten in one small garden on October zoth—and in that neighbourhood rarely seen one at all. The textbooks say that they are only found in the South-West. It has been a vintage year for them, and to watch them opening and closing their crooked wings on a bank of Michaelmas daisies is recreation indeed—as good for the spirit almost as hard work in the harvest field.
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