i 9 o NATURE NEAR LONDON 



day so brown? But the ditches below are yet green 

 with brooklime and rushes. By a gateway stands a tall 

 campanula or bell-flower, two feet high or nearly, with 

 great bells of blue. 



A passing shepherd, without his sheep, but walking 

 with his crook as a staff, stays and turns a brown face 

 towards me when I ask him the way. He points with 

 his iron crook at a narrow line which winds up the Down 

 by some chalk-pits ; it is a footpath from the corner of 

 the road. Just by the corner the hedge is grey with 

 silky flocks of clematis ; the hawthorn is hidden by it. 

 Near by there is a bush, made up of branches from five 

 different shrubs and plants. 



First hazel, from which the yellow leaves are fast 

 dropping ; among this dogwood, with leaves darkening ; 

 between these a bramble bearing berries, some red and 

 some ripe, and yet a pink flower or two left. Thrusting 

 itself into the tangle, long woody bines of bittersweet 

 hang their clusters of red berries, and above and over all 

 the hoary clematis spreads its beard, whitening to meet 

 the winter. These five are all intermixed and bound up 

 together, flourishing in a mass ; nuts and edible berries, 

 semi-poisonous fruit, flowers, creepers ; and hazel, with 

 markings under its outer bark like a gun-barrel. 



This is the last of the plain. Now every step exposes 

 the climber to the force of the unchecked wind. The 

 harebells swing before it, the bennets whistle, but the 

 sward springs to the foot, and the heart grows lighter as 

 the height increases. The ancient hill is alone with the 

 wind. The broad summit is left to scattered furze and 

 fern cowering under its shelter. A sunken fosse and 

 earthwork have slipped together. So lowly are they now 

 after these fourteen hundred years that in places the 

 long rough grass covers and conceals them altogether. 



