282 FIELD AND HEDGEROW, 



the brooklet, and the still coombe became yet more 

 silent There was an alder, ivy-grown, beside the stream 

 — a tree with those lines which take an artist's fancy. 

 Under the roots of alders the water- ousel often creeps 

 by day, and the tall heron stalks past at night. Re- 

 ceding up the eastern slope of the coombe the sunlight 

 left the dark alder's foliage in the deep shadow of the 

 hollow. I went up the slope till I could see the sun, 

 and waited ; in a few minutes the shadow reached me, 

 and it was sunset ; I went still higher, and presently the 

 sun set again. A cool wind was drawing up the coombe, 

 it was dusky in the recesses of the oaks, and the water 

 of the stream had become dark when we emerged from 

 the great hollow, and yet without the summer's evening 

 had but just commenced, and the banks were still heated 

 by the sun. 



In contrast to the hills and moors which are so open 

 and wild, the broad vales beneath are closely shut in 

 with hedges. The fields are all of moderate size, unlike 

 the great pastures elsewhere, so that the constant suc- 

 cession of hedges, one after the other, for ten, twenty, or 

 more miles, encloses the country as it were fivefold. 

 Most of the fields are square, or at all events right- 

 angled, unlike the irregular outline and corners of fields 

 in other counties. The number of meadows make it 

 appear as if the land was chiefly grass, though there is 

 really a fair proportion of arable. Over every green 

 hedge there seems a grassy mead ; in every hedge trees 

 are numerous, and their thick June foliage, green too, 

 gives a sense of green colour everywhere. But this is 

 relieved with red — the soil is red, and where the plough 

 has been the red furrows stand out so brightly as to 

 seem lifted a little from the level. These red squares 

 when on the side of rising ground show for many miles. 



