78 THE RING OF NATURE 



In the next field those pretty clowns, the 

 peewits, are ' bofning ' up and down, their broad- 

 ended wings seeming ever about to fail them 

 and send them tumbling beyond recovery, but 

 actually bearing them with extraordinary deft- 

 ness. The common name I have selected from 

 many gives some faint idea of the weird sweetness 

 of their call. It is just a symbol by means of which 

 can be called up the shrill but beautiful com- 

 plainings with which they greet our steps when 

 they stray anywhere near their eggs upon the 

 ground. They have evidently eggs just now in 

 the rough field, where they tumble and wheel 

 with an excess of anxiety that many a lady in 

 town must own is not unjustified. Can there be 

 any one in the world who, having seen a newly 

 hatched lapwing, can still eat plovers' eggs ? 

 Can there be any farmer aware of one tenth of 

 the bird's usefulness who can permit her to 

 do so? 



The reddish-brown ploughed field dips at an 

 edge and makes a little glen thick with the ebony 

 of blackthorn, on which the starry white blossoms 

 are just opening in showers. A song of a new kind 

 comes from there a low vibrant throb that speaks 

 of sunshine caught in a thicket, rather than the 

 free sunshine in which the lark swims. It is nearly 

 the same music that the pigeons make as they 

 sprawl on the sunny slope of a roof. We hear it 

 again in June when our migrant turtle dove has 

 come to us from Egypt. 



