I04 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



to work a perceptible change in the colour of earth! 

 How natural that at such a season, just at the turn of 

 the year, I should take an entire day in the fields solely 

 to look at the grass, to rejoice in it again after the long 

 wintry months, nourishing my mind on it even as old 

 King Nebuchadnezzar nourished his body! The sight 

 of it was all I went for, all I wanted, and whatever I 

 saw besides pleased me only because it formed a suit- 

 able background, or made it seem brighter by contrast 

 or served in some way to set it off. Old red-brick 

 farmhouses, seen at a distance, nestling among evergreen 

 and large, leafless trees, in many cases the deep, sloping 

 roofs stained all over with orange-coloured lichen; 

 quiet little hamlets too, half hidden beneath their great 

 elms as under a reddish purple cloud; the endless grey 

 winding road, with low thorn hedges on either side 

 winding with it, leafless and a deep purple brown in 

 colour except where ivy had grown over and covered 

 them with dark green brown-veined leaves silvered with 

 the sunlight. A hundred things besides — red cows 

 grazing on a green field, a flock of starlings wheeling 

 about overhead and anon dropping to the earth; gulls, 

 too, resting in another field, white and pale grey, their 

 beaks turned to the wind: they were like little bird- 

 shaped drifts of snow lying on the green turf, shining in 

 the sun. For all day long the weather was perfect — a 

 day of soft wind and bright sunshine following a spell 

 of cold, rough weather with flooding rains; a soft blue 

 sky peopled with white and pale grey clouds travelling 

 before the wind. 



