time, as I sat waiting and listening, there came the faintest far-off
song of a bird away in the trees; the merest thin upstroke of sound,
slight in structure, the echo of the strong spring singing. This was the
summer repetition, dying away. A willow-wren still remembered his love,
and whispered about it to the silent fir tops, as in after days we turn
over the pages of letters, withered as leaves, and sigh. So gentle, so
low, so tender a song the willow-wren sang that it could scarce be known
as the voice of a bird, but was like that of some yet more delicate
creature with the heart of a woman.

A butterfly with folded wings clung to a stalk of grass; upon the under
side of his wing thus exposed there were buff spots, and dark dots and
streaks drawn on the finest ground of pearl-grey, through which there
came a tint of blue; there was a blue, too, shut up between the wings,
visible at the edges. The spots, and dots, and streaks were not exactly
the same on each wing; at first sight they appeared similar, but, on
comparing one with the other, differences could be traced. The pattern
was not mechanical; it was hand-painted by Nature, and the painter's eye
and fingers varied in their work.

How fond Nature is of spot-markings!--the wings of butterflies, the
feathers of birds, the surface of eggs, the leaves and petals of plants
are constantly spotted; so, too, fish--as trout. From the wing of the
butterfly I looked involuntarily at the foxglove I had just gathered;
inside, the bells were thickly spotted--dots and dustings that might have
been transferred to a butterfly's wing. The spotted meadow-orchis; the
brown dots on the cowslips; brown, black, greenish, reddish dots and
spots and dustings on the eggs of the finches, the whitethroats, and so
many others--some of the spots seem as if they had been splashed on and
had run into short streaks, some mottled, some gathered together at the