Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 1 July 1916
Surrey, June 30
The chill west winds and heavy showers take their toll of insect life. You miss the small blue butterflies on the downs, most delicate of the lesser things that fly in dozens, with slight wings that the sun shines through and tinges with all kinds of hues; two or three come carried along by the wind and escape the big drops for fifty yards or so. Then they are struck down on to the dripping bents and there is nothing left in the air but groups of gnats which seem able to enjoy summer in any kind of weather. But lift the wild clematis that just here covers all the hedge, and there are all kinds of live things sheltering in warmth. A meadow pipit goes out twittering, while a robin merely perches a little distance off and eyes you; speckled butterflies chase away, stag beetles crawl, and a brown lappet moth, disturbed before its hour, sails as best it can over the hedge.
An hour later, when the clouds and the wind have gone, everything changes. Insects on the wing seem to have recovered life, they are so many; the cuckoo spit appears as if from nowhere in the hollows of a hundred budding flowers and frosts the honeysuckle bloom; gauze-flies are in the thistles; the light fluffy fruit of the dandelion wafts across and settles on the wild convolvulus; the quaking grass shivers, although the leaves of the overgrown stitchwort betray no sign of a breeze; and the swallows go higher and higher as they circle in the red light of coming sundown. Now song breaks out again; you hear it coming up from the small wood beside the broad field where the wheat is just losing its flower.
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Source: Guardian Environment