174 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



saw the inhabitants of a hill beside the road bringing 

 out the eggs into the sunshine. They could not do it 

 fast enough; some ran out with eggs, and placed 

 them on the top of the little mound, and others seized 

 eggs that had been exposed sufficiently and hurried 

 with them into the interior. 



Woody nightshade grows in quantities along this 

 road, and, apparently, all about the outskirts of the 

 town. There is not a hedge without it, and it creeps 

 over the mounds of earth at the sides of the highways. 

 Some fumitory appeared this summer in a field of 

 barley; till then I had not observed any for some 

 time in that district. This plant, once so common, 

 but now nearly eradicated by culture, has a soft 

 pleasant green. A cornflower, too, flowered in another 

 field, quite a treasure to find where these beautiful 

 blue flowers are so scarce. The last day of August 

 there was a fierce combat on the footpath between a 

 wasp and a brown moth. They rolled over and 

 struggled, now one, now the other uppermost, and 

 the wasp appeared to sting the moth repeatedly. 

 The moth, however, got away. 



There are so many jackdaws about the suburbs 

 that, when a flock of rooks passes over, the caw- 

 cawing is quite equalled by the jack-jucking. The 

 daws are easily known by their lesser size and by 

 their flight, for they use their wings three times to 

 the rook's once. Numbers of daws build in the knot- 

 holes and hollows of the horse-chestnut trees in Bushey 

 Park, and in the elms of the grounds of Hampton 

 Court. 



To the left of the Diana Fountain there are a 



