36 EARLY LETTERS [CHAP. I 



Letter 12 March 25th [1844?]. The first period of vegetation, and 

 the banks are clothed with pale-blue violets to an extent I 

 have never seen equalled, and with primroses. A few days 

 later some of the copses were beautifully enlivened by 

 Ranunculus auricomus, wood anemones, and a white Stellaria. 

 Again, subsequently, large areas were brilliantly blue with blue- 

 bells. The flowers are here very beautiful, and the number of 

 flowers; [and] the darkness of the blue of the common little 

 Polygala almost equals it to an alpine gentian. 



There are large tracts of woodland, [cut down] about once 

 every ten years ; some of these enclosures seem to be very 

 ancient. On the south side of Cudham Wood a beech 

 hedge has grown to Brobdignagian size, with several of 

 the huge branches crossing each other and firmly grafted 

 together. 



Larks abound here, and their songs sound most agreeably 

 on all sides ; nightingales are common. Judging from an odd 

 cooing note, something like the purring of a cat, doves are 

 very common in the woods. 



June 25th. The sainfoin fields are now of the most beautiful 

 pink, and from the number of hive-bees frequenting them the 

 humming noise is quite extraordinary. This humming is 

 rather deeper than the humming overhead, which has been 

 continuous and loud during all these last hot days over 

 almost every field. The labourers here say it is made by 

 " air-bees," and one man, seeing a wild bee in a flower different 

 from the hive kind, remarked : " That, no doubt, is an air-bee." 

 This noise is considered as a sign of settled fair weather. 



