Any intelligent gardener can tell me that the top of a sunny wall is far too hot for a fuschia. Certainly; and of course it is—especially in August. Yet some misguided person had one planted there—just where the wall has a break in it, and a flight of steps leads down to the next level. It is the lovely old-fashioned bush sort, smothered with slender drooping blossoms; and it reaches out long arms that arch right over the steps, and as you go down, unless you lower your head, you set a-tinkling scores of crimson bells with rich blue-purple centres. And people who understand all about fuchsias glare at it severely, and then at me, and remark, “A most unsuitable position!” And where nothing else in particular is making any sort of a show, the ubiquitous Herb Robert spreads itself about, on the top of the walls, or roots in crevices down the sides—it isn’t particular where; so long as there are stones that need clothing with loveliness, there you will find it, laying its crimson leaves with a lacy airiness over the stern surface of the rock. The very scents of the garden are hot and pungent, as one rubs against thyme and marjoram, or the great sage bush that smothers one wall. The trees of sweet bay were cut in the morning; the rosemary bushes had to be trimmed where their branches were lying on the ground; someone has stepped on pieces in passing. All day long the heat strikes down on the parched, cracking earth, baking the stones, shrivelling up any fern fronds that chance to catch its direct rays, drying up the little brook, and testing the powers of endurance of the scarlets and yellows, orange and reds, that are flaunting themselves in the face of the sun. To sit out of doors is only possible beneath the firs and larches, in the green shade by the wood house, where the sun never penetrates; and even here it makes one warm to watch the glare beyond the thicket of trees, the hot air quivering, nothing but butterflies and dragon flies about, and nought to break a breathless silence but the twitter of the tits, grub-hunting in the larches, and the perpetual hum of uncountable insects, who seem to find no heat too great. * * * * * But presently the shadows of the pines begin to lengthen, and in the shade thrown by the larches along the meadow side blackbirds are seen making short runs along the ground on foraging expeditions. Chaffinches, tits, linnets, and bullfinches come out from green hiding places and go down to the birds’ bath to drink. Longer grow the shadows, the swallows rise and take high curving sweeps in the upper air—wonderful little aeronauts whom no man has trained. As the sun touches the top of the opposite hills a breeze wakes up the birch wood, whispering that the sunset will soon be here, and the leaves start talking about the stifling heat that so exhausted them through the day.