ad various cobs and ponies from time to time; quite a good pony
could be bought at six months old for about L12, and one of the best
we had was Taffy, from a drove of Welsh. Returning from Evesham
Station with my man we passed a labourer with something in a hamper on
his shoulder that rattled, just as we reached the Aldington turning;
Taffy started, swerved across the road in the narrowest part, and
jumped through the hedge, taking cart and all; we found ourselves in a
wheat-field, but were not overturned, and reached a gate in safety
none the worse.

On an old May Day (May 12) I was at Bretforton Manor playing tennis
and shooting rooks. About 10.30 p.m. the cart and Taffy were brought
round; I had all my things in and was about to mount when, the pony
fidgeting to be off, my friend's groom caught at the rein, but he had
omitted to buckle it on one side of the bit. In an instant pony and
trap had disappeared, and the man was lying in the drive with a broken
leg. We had to carry him home on a door, and then went in search of
the pony, expecting every moment to find it and the trap in a ditch;
about half a mile from Aldington we met my own man who had come in
search of my remains. He told us that the pony and trap were quite
safe and uninjured. The clever animal had trotted the whole distance,
over two miles, with the reins dragging behind him, taken the turning
from the highroad, and again at my gate, and pulled up in front of the
house, where someone passing saw him and brought my man out to the
rescue.

CHAPTER XXIII.

BUTTERFLIES--MOTHS--WASPS.

"How like a rainbow, sparkling as a dewdrop,
Glittering as gold, and lively as a swallow,
Each left his grave-shroud and in rapture winged him
Up to the heavens."
--ANON.

I have always been fascinated by the beauty of butterflies and moths,
and I think I began collecting when I was about eleven, as I remember
having a net when I was at school at Rottingdean. My first exciting
capture was a small tortoiseshell, and I was much disappointed when I
discovered that it was quite a common insect. In 1917 some nettles
here were black with the larvae of this species, but I think they must
have been nearly all visited by the ichneumons, which pierce the skin,
laying their eggs in the living body of the larva, as the butterflies
were not specially common later. I was, however, fortunate in
identifying a specimen of