These are the true generators of that heavenly sweat, or saliva of the stars, concerning which Pliny the Younger wrote so learnedly. And they are many tribes--green, purple, brown, isabel-line; but all are one nation, and sacred to that fair god whom the Carian water-nymph loved not wisely but too well. For, albeit the children of an ancient union, they marry not, nor are given in marriage, yet withal multiply exceedingly, so that one (not two) may in a single season produce a billion. And at last when autumn comes, won back from the cold god to his hot mother, they know love and wedlock, and die like all married things. These are the Aphides--sometimes unprettily called plant-lice, and vaguely spoken of by the uninformed as "blight"--and they nourish themselves on vegetable juices, that thin green blood which is the plant's life.
This, then, is the fruit which the birds have, come to gather. In June is their richest harvest; it is more bountiful than September, when apples redden, and grapes in distant southern lands are
252 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE
gathered for the wine-press. In yon grey wall at the end of the lawn, just above the climbing rose-bush, there are now seven hungry infants in one small cradle, each one, some one says, able to consume its own weight of insect food every day. I am inclined to believe that it must be so, while trying to count the visits paid to the nest in one hour by the parent tits--those small tits that do the gardener so much harm! We know, on good authority, that the spider has a "nutty flavour"; and most insects in the larval stage afford succulent and toothsome, or at all events beaksome, morsels. These are, just now, the crimson cherries, purple and yellow plums, currants, red, white, and black--and sun-painted peaches, asking in their luscious ripeness for a mouth to melt in, that fascinate finch and flycatcher alike, and make the starlings smack their horny lips with a sound like a loving kiss.
Not that I care, or esteem birds for what they eat or do not eat. With all these creatures that are at strife among themselves, and that birds prey upon, I am at peace, even to the smallest that are visible--the red spider which is no spider; and the minute gossamer spider clinging to
IN AN OLD GARDEN 253
the fine silvery hairs of the flying summer; and the coccus that fall from the fruit trees to float on their buoyant cottony down--a summer snow. Fils de la Vierge are these, and sacred. The man who can needlessly set his foot on a worm is as strange to my soul as De Quincey's imaginary Malay, or even his "damned crocodile." The worm that one sees lying bruised and incapable on the gravel walk has fallen among thieves. These little lives do me good and not harm. I smell the acid ants to strengthen my memory. I know that if I set an overturned cockchafer on his legs three sins shall be forgiven me; that if I am kindly tolerant of the spider that drops accidentally on my hand or face, my purse shall be mysteriously replenished. At the same time, one has to remember that such sentiments, as a rule, are not understood by those who have charge over groves and gardens, whose minds are ignorant and earthy, or, as they would say, practical. Of the balance of nature they know and care naught, nor can they regard life as sacred; it is enough to know that it is or may be injurious to their interests for them to sweep it away. The small thing that has been flying about and uttering