212 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



a hive-bee came to them ; next the yellow crocus ; bees 

 came to these, too, and so eager were they that one bee 

 would visit the same flower five or six times before 

 finally going away. Bees are very eager for water in 

 the early year ; you may see them in crowds on the wet 

 mud in ditches ; there was a wild bee drowning in a 

 basin of water the other day till I took him out. 



Before the end of January the woodbine leaf was 

 out, always the first to come, and never learning that it 

 is too soon ; whether the woodbine came over with 

 ' Richard Conqueror ' or the Romans, it still ima- 

 gines itself ten degrees further south, so that some time 

 seems necessary to teach a plant the alphabet. Imme- 

 diately afterwards down came a north wind and put 

 nature under its thumb for two months ; the drone-fly 

 hid himself, the bees went home, everything became 

 shrivelled, dry, inhuman. The local direction of the 

 wind might vary, but it was still the same polar draught, 

 the blood-sucker ; for, like a vampire, it sucks the very 

 blood and moisture out of delicate human life, just as it 

 dries up the sap in the branch. While this lasted there 

 were no notes to make, the changes were slower than 

 the hour hand of a clock ; still it was interesting to see 

 the tree-climber come every morning at eleven o'clock 

 to the cobble-stone wall and ascend it exactly as he 

 ascends trees, peering into chinks among the moss and 

 the pennywort. He seemed almost as fond of these 

 walls as of his tree trunks. He came regularly at eleven 

 and again at three in the afternoon, and a barn owl 

 went by with a screech every evening a little after eight 

 The starlings told the time of the year as accurately as 

 the best chronometer at Whitehall. When I saw the 

 last chimney swallow, November 30, they went by to 

 their sleeping-trees about three o'clock in the afternoon 



