84 NATURE NEAR LONDON 



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 bloom- 

 ing under the elm ; honeysuckle hanging creamy white 

 coronals round the ash boughs ; white meadow-sweet 

 flowering on the shore of the ditch ; white clover, too, 

 beside the gateway. As spring is azure and purple, so 

 midsummer is white, and autumn golden. Thus the 

 coming out of the wheat into ear is marked and wel- 

 comed with the purest colour. 



But these, though the most prominent along the 

 hedge, are not the only flowers ; the prevalent white 

 is embroidered with other hues. The brown feathers 

 of a few reeds growing where the furrows empty the 

 showers into the ditch, wave above the corn. Among 

 the leaves of mallow its mauve petals are sheltered from 

 the sun. On slender stalks the yellow vetchling blooms, 

 reaching ambitiously as tall as the lowest of the brambles. 

 Bird's-foot lotus, with red claws, is overtopped by the 

 grasses. 



The elm has a fresh green it has put forth its second 

 or midsummer shoot ; the young leaves of the aspen are 

 white, and the tree as the wind touches it seems to turn 

 grey. The furrows run to the ditch under the reeds, the 

 ditch declines to a little streamlet which winds all hidden 

 by willowherb and rush and flag, a mere trickle of water 

 under brooklime, away at the feet of the corn. In the 

 shadow, deep down beneath the crumbling bank which is 



