96 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



are always searching in spring ; blackbirds, too, are 

 fond of a beanfield. 



Time advanced again, and afar on the slope bright 

 yellow mustard flowered, a hill of yellow behind the 

 elms. The luxuriant purple of trifolium, acres of rich 

 colour, glowed in the sunlight. There was a scent of 

 flowering beans, the vetches were in flower, and the 

 peas which clung together for support the stalk of 

 the pea goes through the leaf as a painter thrusts his 

 thumb through his palette. Under the edge of the 

 footpath through the wheat a wild pansy blooms. 



Standing in the gateway beneath the shelter of the 

 elms as the clouds come over, it is pleasant to hear 

 the cool refreshing rain come softly down ; the green 

 wheat drinks it as it falls, so that hardly a drop reaches 

 the ground, and to-morrow it will be as dry as ever. 

 Wood pigeons call from the hedges, and blackbirds 

 whistle in the trees ; the sweet delicious rain refreshes 

 them as it does the corn. 



Thunder mutters in the distance, and the electric 

 atmosphere rapidly draws the wheat up higher. A 

 few days sunshine and the first wheatear appears. 

 Very likely there are others near, but standing with 

 their hood of green leaf towards you, and therefore 

 hidden. As the wheat comes into ear it is garlanded 

 about with hedges in full flower. 



It is midsummer, and midsummer, like a bride, is 

 decked in white. On the high -reaching briars white 

 June roses ; white flowers on the lowly brambles ; 

 broad white umbels of elder in the corner, and white 

 cornels blooming under the elm ; honeysuckle hang- 

 ing creamy white coronals round the ash boughs; 



