204 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



and in such a hurry to see the world and to partake of its iniquities, 

 that they cannot stay to be properly and completely hatched, but treat 

 their mother's gentle offices with scorn, and bolt off with their shells 

 still sticking on their heads. At mid-September too, the thrush and 

 the blackbird, and the woodlark and willow- wren, resume their songs, 

 and the sweet blue-throated redstart appears and sings his soft notes 

 upon a lofty bough. Did you ever take breakfast with a landrail, or 

 dodge him through the bottoms of the furze ? If you ever do, regard 

 him as a morning fantasy or a sprite from cloud-land ; the fellow is 

 so incarnate in his deceit, so wily and sprite-like, that, for all we 

 know, he may be the earth-born child of the Old-one ; he can die at 

 a moment's notice when you try to chase him down, and you may 

 handle him, tumble him about, and he will lie as still and stark as a 

 hurdle or a boiled salmon ; but just put him down and turn your back, 

 and he will open one eye and look wistfully into futurity, not forgetting 

 the lee side of the present, and finding all clear, will be up on his feet, 

 and off into the shelter of the sedges, before you can say " Jack 

 Robinson," and you may grope there for two or three minutes, and, 

 disappointed, rise from the wet ground, just in time to see him skip 

 away on his wings from the low bushes a furlong off, and to find 

 yourself plastered with clay in return for your enthusiasm. 



But the black grouse, the noble bird of the moorland, the stately, 

 sweeping black game of the hill and the heather ; he comes out from 

 his summer haunts as the fruits grow ripe, and scuds along over the 

 rocky wastes like a valiant veteran, too noble to fear, and too confiding 

 to conceal himself. Dear old Gilbert White tells us how his father's 

 table was oft supplied with this noble game — almost the only relic of 

 the old forest days — but how, during his time, it had become so scarce 

 as never to be seen. Rusticus knows him well, however, and has seen 

 him, even in these degenerate days of railroads and paiiited fences, 

 amid the quiet solitudes and green hills of Surrey. "Well, there let 

 him live in the leafy shelter of his moorland home, under the green 

 arching boughs, and beside the blue flowers that watch the rising and 

 the setting of the sun ; where the robin and the wood-lark sing in May, 

 and the red leaves spin about when autumn winds are sighing ; where 

 winter shakes down a virgin garment for the earth, and the voice of 

 Nature is heard in its unbroken harmony, and where man, the 

 despoiler, is unknown. There let him lie with his sweet companions 



