WHEN ALL THE WORLD IS YOUNG 111 



the thicket, and when I am quiet enough and 

 removed enough, she comes with her beak full of 

 chopped worm and tries to stay the clamour for a 

 few minutes. 



The long lush grass in which ragged-robins 

 and moon-daisies are springing only just ahead 

 of the bents ; the smother of fool's parsley or 

 Satan's oatmeal flung against the hedge ; the 

 hedges themselves covered with drooping green 

 and aromatic with blossom ; the golden gorse, the 

 myriad-fingered bracken, the waist-high horsetails 

 are all full now of young things. We do not see 

 or hear a hundredth part of them, for the majority 

 of them are very wary of making themselves 

 known. An age-long tradition of danger has 

 crystallized into instinctive habits of concealment 

 which every summer re justifies and strengthens 

 in the next generation. 



As I pass by the only path through a bog 

 bright with rejuvenated bog-bean and butterwort, 

 a very furtive bird starts from my very feet and 

 goes off broken-winged in evident design on the 

 part of herself or her Creator to lead me astray 

 from the place where my foot is. And there 

 under the shade of a thin bush of bog sallow, 

 in a grass-lined cup, are two quaint, long-necked 

 birds apparently dead. I take one of them in my 

 hand and with long limp neck the head hangs over 

 the edge of my palm, as the necks of dead fowls 

 hang over the edge of the poulterer's counter. 

 The eyes are closed and even the body runs a little 



