92 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



fall foul of millions in a second, it being sensitive, 

 itself, only to thousands. We do, indeed, admit the 

 " Zeitgeist^'' but if ever we allow for it when we 

 play the critic, it is always in favour of our own 

 perspicuity — and this against any number of past 

 spiritual giants. This is an age in which most things 

 are questioned. Is it not time for that dogma of 

 what we call " the test of time " — by which everybody 

 understands his own time — to be questioned, too } 



" In April," says the rhyme, *' the cuckoo shows 

 his bill." Somewhat late April, in my experience, 

 at least about this bleak, open part of Suffolk, 

 which, however, contrary to what might be ex- 

 pected, seems loved by the bird. Almost opposite 

 to my house, but at some little distance from it, 

 across the river, there is a wide expanse of open, 

 sandy land, more or less thinly clothed with a long, 

 coarse, wiry grass, and dotted, irregularly, at very 

 wide intervals, with elder and hawthorn trees and 

 bushes — a desolate prospect, which I prefer, myself, 

 to one of cornfields, unless the corn is all full of 

 poppies and corn-flowers, which, indeed, it is 

 here, and I am told it is bad agriculture. If that 

 be so, then, a has the good ! Part of this space, 

 where the sand encroaches on the grass, till it is 

 shared, at last, only by short, dry lichen, which 

 the rabbits browse, I call the amphitheatre, it 

 being roughly circular in shape. One solitary 

 crab-apple tree — from the seed, no doubt, of the 

 cultivated kind — growing on its outer edge, is a 

 perfect glory of blossom in the spring, and be- 

 comes, then, quite a landmark. This barren space is 

 a favourite gathering-ground of the stone-curlews ; 



