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The hornets are dead. Not one was about even in the middle of the day fly hunting though house flies are still plentiful. The hornets seem to be almost the first insects to succumb to the cold. The black wasps are far hardier. With their passing goes that tiny shrill uproar of the pasture and in the amber quiet of sunset the place becomes a vast whispering gallery.
And the food is shaken out of you as fast as you gets it down, and 'tis a marvel that a body gets to the other side o' the world alive! 'It's wonderful good of you, miss, to go to take care of your brother! said Patty, regarding Gwen with an awe-struck face; 'but you gentlefolk seem to be hardier to such things than us should be. And then you'll be able to speak them foreign langwidges.
The tropical forms all disappear in these zones, as the equatorial do in the tropical zones. The Warm Temperate zones exhibit the same disposition to retain some of the hardier and more abundant sub-tropical forms that characterize the other zones, in respect to their adjoining isotherms. Evergreen shrubs, heaths, cistusses, and leguminous plants are everywhere more abundant.
There is the hay-time in summer when, under the sultry sky, and amid the strong scents of the hardier field-flowers, the huge wain is driven from the stubble field into the shadows of the impending woods, and around it the workers sing and make merry in token of joy for the abundant yield of sweet grass that shall fatten the kine in the drear barren months of snow.
In the morning he had a spin in the ice-boat with his hostess and a few of the hardier guests; in the afternoon he "went over the farm" with Reggie, and listened, in the elaborately appointed stables, to long and impressive disquisitions on the horse; after tea he talked in a corner of the firelit hall with a young lady who had professed herself broken-hearted when his engagement was announced, but was now eager to tell him of her own matrimonial hopes; and finally, about midnight, he assisted in putting a gold-fish in one visitor's bed, dressed up a burglar in the bath-room of a nervous aunt, and saw in the small hours by joining in a pillow-fight that ranged from the nurseries to the basement.
The latter is an odd subject to be discussed in this stern and wild scene, which has precisely the same characteristics now as two hundred years ago. The mosquitoes were very abundant last night, and they are certainly a hardier race than their inland brethren. This morning there is a sullen sky, with scarcely any breeze. The clouds throw shadows of varied darkness upon the sea.
Seeing them in readiness, the heralds gave the signal for the encounter. Starting against each other like thunder-bolts, they met in mid-career. The shock was tremendous, and many a cry sprang from female lips, while bursts of applause arose from the hardier spectators. Both lances were shivered, but the results of the strokes dealt on either side were widely different.
Then, to account for the presence of a Spanish flora in the west of Ireland, a bold hypothesis, started by Professor Edward Forbes, is put forward 'that the west of Ireland was geologically united with the north of Spain; admitting which, there is no difficulty in supposing the plants to have travelled along the intervening land, which has subsequently disappeared, and that, owing to climatic changes, the hardier sort of plants, such as saxifrages and heaths, have alone survived.
The aquarium must be built up slowly and tentatively, object by object: plants first, and of the simplest kinds; and not until they are well settled, and the water beaded with oxygen bubbles, should we think of introducing living creatures, and even then only the hardier kinds of actinias, mollusks, and crabs.
I fancy few English folks think of glass-houses in connection with the Riviera. Yet the chief business of horticulturists during a large portion of the year is in the conservatory. Brilliant as is the winter sun, the nights are cold and the fall of temperature after sundown extremely rapid. Only the hardier flowers, therefore, remain out of doors.
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