JUNE IN BROADLAND. 



'And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds, 

 And the wave- worn horns of the echoing bank, 

 And the silvery marsh flowers that throng 

 The desolate creeks and pools among, 

 Were flooded over with eddying song. 



AYEST of the months of the year, smiling June dawns upon us garlanded 

 with roses; the fields and woods and hedges are glowing with the warm 

 touch of her fingers, and all nature seems joyous and light-hearted. 

 There is the slightest ripple upon the surface of old ocean, and a faint 

 murmur falls on the ear as the tiny wavelets l crowd ' each other, as if 

 in play, upon the shingly shore. 

 In Broadland there is quietude, save as the birds make merry music, and the 

 lowing kine join in with deeper bass, and the bleating of sheep is heard or save 

 when the playful wind whispers in the tree-tops, that here and there fling their 

 shadows upon the placid waters below, and it bustles up and down the crowded 

 ranks of pale green reeds until from among their leafy stems, waving and rustling, 

 arises a murmur that reminds us of the gentle plashing of the wavelets upon the 

 sea-beach. 



On such a morning we find ourselves at the railway station securing tickets 

 for a jolly day's outing in Broadland. Ere long we are being borne through furzy 

 and bracken-covered sand-hills, beyond the valleys of which are caught glimpses 

 of the deep blue sea now across fields where the dark green corn is growing, 

 sometimes shut in for a brief space by trees and tall hedgerows, but more often 

 rumbling along in the open, with miles and miles of landscape stretching away on 

 either side of us, with the distance softened off into foliage, from among which, 



