mourn over the game, and improvers over their young woods. The scene cannot compare with the forest and prairie fires of America, which drive all sorts of wild and tame beasts into the ponds together—wolves and lambs, bears and deer, Red Indians and white Christians and negro fugitives—all crouching under water, and putting out their noses into the hot and smoky air when they must breathe. We have no such spectacle as this to watch; but our moorland fires in a droughty July are sublime and terrible in their way, and sadly disastrous.
We shall find something different this year. The peat-cutters will see the brown water ooze into the trenches as they form them: the children will swim their rush-boats in the blue pools among the heather, while their elders are digging and piling the peat. The older children will go bilberry gathering to some purpose in a season like this. Even cranberries are not out of the question. Here and there, as we come upon some little rill glistening in the turf, or muttering among little sandy shoals and pebbles, we shall find women and children, each with a tin pot, picking the red berries from among the dark leaves. I don’t know which is the prettier sight, a basketful of bleaberries with the bloom upon them, or a bowl of cranberries in the sunlight on the grass. There are flowers to all this fruit, too. Clumps and rows and large beds of wild thyme, where the bees are humming all day long; and some of the earlier heaths; and blue-bells quivering with every breath, or sheltering under the gorse; these abound over our whole track. Then, when we stop by the pools where the bulrush waves and nods, and where the cotton-rush hangs out its little banners, as if a fairy host were marching beneath, we look for the curlew’s nest, and, if it be early or late enough, we are sure to hear the plover all along our way. All these things are different in a season of drought. And so it is when we reach the tilled lands, where the quail should be heard in the corn-fields, and the young partridges should be beginning to fly.
It will not take us many miles round to see how the salmon-fishing goes on in the estuary, where the spearing in the pools, as the tide goes out, is a fine night-spectacle. I am always glad of an excuse for a night’s watching, to see the glitter of the torches in the long lines and broad patches of water left by the tide, and the long shadows of the men on the wet sand, and the black circle of figures round the pool, with a yellow face now and then visible from a flash of the torch within, and the basket of silvery, shining fish when there has been good success.
My children tell me I am an animal of nocturnal habits—at least, in the middle of summer. Well! why not? The savans have astonished us with the news that seven-ninths of the known animal creation are now found to be nocturnal in their habits: and why should not I go with the great majority? The laugh is on my side against those who conceitedly suppose the universe to have been made and arranged for them, so that light is better than darkness, and the day than the night, because it suits them better! However, for three parts in four of the year, I am willing to follow the fashion of my kind in shutting my eyes upon the night; but in the hot season, why not enjoy the sweetest hours of the twenty-four?
Then we look for lights, as in the day we look for flowers. Not only in the sky—though the meteors are splendid in the thundery season—but in the woods, in the gardens, and on the sea. The glow-worm is gone: but there is a more diffused and mysterious light about the roots of trees than the glow-worm gives; and where felled trees have lain long, we may see it playing on and under the prostrate trunk. It is the phosphorescent light which hangs about certain fungi, and especially those which infest decaying wood. There have been rare nights at this season when I have caught the flash of light which certain flowers give out, and there is no doubt to my mind about the soft veil of floating radiance which wraps round some of the boldest blossoms in our greenhouses and parterres in sultry nights. Where there is a fine spread of nasturtiums, or a large clump of the hairy red poppy, or a group of orange lilies, the pretty sight may be seen, quite independently of the amusement of holding a light to fraxinellas, and other flowers which abound in volatile oils.
Our grand night-adventure, however, will be at the close of the month. The boys’ holidays are to end at the sea, this summer, as in many former ones, and it is an old promise that we should spend a night at sea with the herring-boats. Besides stars and meteors, we may then see lights of many hues. The lighthouse gleam, waxing and waning the whole night through, with the long train it casts over the heaving sea, has an inexhaustible charm for me. To watch it from an inland hill is very bewitching, or from a distant point on the sands, especially if they are wet; but this is nothing to the pleasure at sea, where that path lies straight to one’s feet, wherever one may go, growing bright and dim, and bright again, as by a regular pulsation, answering to one within one’s-self. Then, in the wake of the boat, there may perhaps be the phosphorescent light so familiar to voyagers, now glancing in large sparkles, and now breaking out along the ridge of a billow. Moonlight there will not be: for the choice is of a dark night for the fishery. A dark night, with breeze enough to ripple the water, is the best.
We have often seen the watcher on the cliffs, looking out with experienced eyes for the peculiar sheen and movement of the water which betoken the presence of the herrings. It will be rather too early for the great shoals on which the fortunes of the fishermen for the year depend. If it were not, there would be no chance for us; for the men want every inch of room in their boats for themselves in the full season. But we may be in time for the first-fruits of the fishery; and if so, we are to make a night of it, starting at sunset or later, according to where the fish may be. We rather hope to go far out, and get some notion of deep-sea fishing, and of the smell, and the handling of the nets and other gear; and of the look of the fish as they come tumbling in, and glitter in the rays of the lantern; and of the appearance of the setting of stars and rising of dawn from the very surface of the sea, which is quite different from the elevation of a large vessel; and, not