126 NATURE NEAR LONDON 



oats. The meads are as verdant, even more so, than in 

 the spring, because of the rain, and the brooks crowded 

 with green flags. 



Haws are very plentiful this year (1881), and excep- 

 tionally large, many fully double the size commonly seen. 

 So heavily are the branches laden with bunches of the 

 red fruit that they droop as apple trees do with a more 

 edible burden. Though so big, and to all appearance 

 tempting to birds, none have yet been eaten; and, 

 indeeds, haws seem to be resorted to only as a change 

 unless severe weather compels. 



Just as we vary our diet, so birds eat haws, and not 

 many of them till driven by frost and snow. If any stay 

 on till the early months of next year, wood-pigeons and 

 missel-thrushes will then eat them ; but at this season 

 they are untouched. Blackbirds will peck open the hips 

 directly the frost comes; the hips go long before the 

 haws. There was a large crop of mountain-ash berries, 

 every one of which has been taken by blackbirds and 

 thrushes, which are almost as fond of them as of garden 

 fruit. 



Blackberries are thick, too it is a berry year and 

 up in the horse-chestnut the prickly-coated nuts hang up 

 in bunches, as many as eight in a stalk. Acorns are 

 large, but not so singularly numerous as the berries, 

 nor are hazel-nuts. This provision of hedge fruit no 

 more indicates a severe winter than a damaged wheat 

 harvest indicates a mild one. 



There is something wrong with elm trees. In the 

 early part of this summer, not long after the leaves 

 were fairly out upon them, here and there a branch 

 appeared as if it had been touched with red-hot iron and 

 burnt up, all the leaves withered and browned on the 

 boughs. First one tree was thus affected, then another, 



