beneath the fibres and matted surface. The hawthorn overhangs it, the
fern grows by, red mice rustle past.

It thunders, and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through the
treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched branches the
lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of
a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a crackle as if a tree
fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the white florets of the
wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a
fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls them out into the
fields; but the humble-bee's home, under moss and matted fibres, remains
uninjured. His house at the root of the king of trees, like a cave in the
rock, is safe. The storm passes and the sun comes out, the air is the
sweeter and the richer for the rain, like verses with a rhyme; there will
be more honey in the flowers. Humble he is, but wild; always in the
field, the wood; always by the banks and thickets; always wild and
humming to his flowers. Therefore I like the humble-bee, being, at heart
at least, for ever roaming among the woodlands and the hills and by the
brooks. In such quick summer storms the lightning gives the impression of
being far more dangerous than the zigzag paths traced on the autumn sky.
The electric cloud seems almost level with the ground and the livid flame
to rush to and fro beneath the boughs as the little bats do in the
evening.

Caught by such a cloud, I have stayed under thick larches at the edge of
plantations. They are no shelter, but conceal one perfectly. The
wood-pigeons come home to their nest trees; in larches they seem to have
permanent nests, almost like rooks. Kestrels, too, come home to the wood.
Pheasants crow, but not from fear--from defiance, in fear they scream.
The boom startles them, and they instantly defy the sky. The rabbits