88 SEPTEMBER IN BROADLAND. 



An early September morning finds us hastening on our way into the ' Land 

 of the Broads.' We are our own Jehus for the nonce, for the modern ( bike ' has 

 usurped the place of yacht and horse and railroad. There is much professed 

 appreciation of the beauties of the surrounding country from the saddle of a 

 'safety,' but the temptations to hurry, the obscuring tendencies of dust, and the 

 several other obstacles to observation that are obviously incidental to it, make 

 such statements doubtful, for the eyes and the mind are too much preoccupied 

 to allow them to wander far aside. One wants to dawdle and to 'mardle' (gos- 

 sip) in the lanes, as the bees do among the flowerets, to extract interest from 

 them. 



We have turned our backs upon the sleeping town, whose streets have been 

 handed over to the drowsy policeman and the sweeper. The town sparrows have 

 only just hopped down upon the roadway, the late broods of house-martins are 

 twittering in the doorways of their rude clay tenements. The shrill ory of the 

 swift is no longer heard abovehead, and the swallows will be congregating to-day 

 upon the elevated electric wires, discussing their approaching journey southward. 

 As we glide along the 'turnpike' sounds of bird-life betoken that the feathered 

 tribes are beginning their daily avocations. Snatches of song are indulged in by 

 the thrush and blackbird, whose domestic cares and worries are again ended; and 

 if that sweet mellow song we now heard is not the roundelay of the woodlark, we 

 are very much mistaken. 



The dew is still upon the hedgerows and the grass beneath them. The big 

 nets of the geometric spider, suspended upon the thorny sprays, are beaded with 

 diamond drops that sparkle in the sunlight, and the stubbles are interlaced and 

 covered with the filmy flakes of gossamer. Yon partridges, hastening towards the 

 shelter of the herbage at the hedgeside, are not well-pleased with the close-shorn 

 fields. 



If the foliage of the trees was beautiful when the year was younger, it is far 

 from unlovely now, when tinted and bedecked with the colours of autumn. A few 

 of the leaves have fallen, and many are fading, and will ere long become a part 

 again of mother earth. The naturalist, to whom all life is dear, sighs and regrets 

 that l we all do fade as a leaf,' yet feels assured and satisfied when he remembers 

 that a new life will dawn again when the snows of winter are ended. There are 

 but few wild flowers enlivening the monotony of the hedge-bottom, in which the 

 yellow bracken is spreading its big serrated frondage. The flea-bane dots the 

 coarse herbage with yellow, and the clinging festoons of the great bindweed are 

 hanging out their pinky-white flower-bells. The purple nightshade is flowering 



