All that had been passed away, and the earth was
depopulated. Death triumphed. But under the snow, behind the charmed
rampart, slept the living germs. Down in the deep coombe, where the dark
oaks stood out individually in the whiteness of the snow, fortified round
about with immovable hills, there was the actual presentment of
Zoroaster's sacred story. Locked in sleep lay bud and germ--the
butterflies of next summer were there somewhere, under the snow. The
earth was swept of its inhabitants, but the seeds of life were not dead.
Near by were the tents of the gipsies--an Eastern race, whose forefathers
perhaps had seen that very Magian worship of the Light; and in those
tents birth had already taken place. Under the Night of winter--under the
power of dark Ahriman, the evil spirit of Destruction--lay bud and germ
in bondage, waiting for the coming of Ormuzd, the Sun of Light and
Summer. Beneath the snow, and in the frozen crevices of the trees, in the
chinks of the earth, sealed up by the signet of frost, were the seeds of
the life that would replenish the air in time to come. The buzzing crowds
of summer were still under the snow.
This forest land is marked by the myriads of insects that roam about it
in the days of sunshine. Of all the million million heathbells--multiply
them again by a million million more--that purple the acres of rolling
hills, mile upon mile, there is not one that is not daily visited by
these flying creatures. Countless and incalculable hosts of the
yellow-barred hover-flies come to them; the heath and common, the moor
and forest, the hedgerow and copse, are full of insects.
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