The crows are moved to speak in all sorts of strange languages, including a good deal of English. One took his seat on the very swaying top of a deodar this morning and distinctly ejaculated “Oh _Bother_! Oh _Bother_! Oh _Bother_!” with a guttural throaty emphasis that excited me at last to an unfriendly stone; whereat he went from bad to worse and cursed me. The crow that superintends the East is a strange bird, never happy, seldom in a good humour. He declaims, he soliloquizes, he frequently flies off and says “I’ll enquire;” but his principal note is that of simple derision and he plainly finds humbug in everything. He has no period of tender innocence; some crows are older than others but nobody has ever seen a young crow. There is nothing like him in England; the rooks make as much noise perhaps, but only for a little while in the evening; the crow’s comment upon life is perpetual. Remote, across a valley, it is a kind of fantastic chorus to the reckless course of men; overhead it is a criticism of the most impertinent and espionage without warrant. These, of course, are only country crows; in the cities, like other bad characters, they take greater liberties, becoming more objectionable by sophistication. The butterflies have come back as if by appointment; one big blue and black fellow is carrying on a violent flirtation with a fuchsia under my very nose. She hasn’t much honey, and he, according to Tiglath-Pileser has hardly anything to extract it with. I fear, in the cynicism of our contemporary Gauls, _il perd terriblement son temps_, but it seems to amuse them both, and why comment more severely upon the charming fooling of affinities? The butterflies alight so differently now upon the gravel drive, which is still glistening wet; they pause there on lightest tiptoe with waving wings; a butterfly hates cold feet. The bees are as busy and as cheery as ever; I have wasted the last ten minutes in watching a bumblebee, with the most persuasive hum, sucking the last of their sweetness out of the corn-bottles. The bee clings and the flower drops over; the old pretty garden idyll never loses its power to please. Dear me, if it would always rain and be unattractive I might get something done; as it is.... That was rather a sharp shower, and I noticed that the hawk-moth courting the salvias, braved it through. One would have thought that the big drops would have reduced him to a tiny ball of wet fluff in two minutes, but he has gone on darting from flower to flower quite indifferent. Last night a hawk-moth dined with us, on the dahlias in the middle of the table. He thought it a charming sunny day under the lamps, and enjoyed himself enormously, only leaving with the ladies as he objected to tobacco. We should be delighted to see him again.