288 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



on the top. There too the yellowhammers stay. In 

 the crevices blue tits build deep inside passages that 

 abruptly turn, and baffle egg-stealers. Partridges come 

 over with a whir, but just clearing the top, gliding on 

 extended wings, which to the eye look like a slight brown 

 crescent. The waggoners who go by know that the great 

 hawthorn bastions are favourite resorts of wood-pigeons 

 and missel-thrushes. The haws are ripe in autumn and 

 the ivy berries in spring, so that the bastions yield a 

 double crop. A mallow, the mauve petals of which even 

 the dust of the road cannot impair, flowers here and 

 there on the dry bank below, and broad moon-daisies 

 among the ripe and almost sapless grass of midsummer. 



If any one climbed the wall from the park and looked 

 across at the plain of corn-fields in early spring, every- 

 where there would be seen brown dots in the air — above 

 the first slender green blades ; above the freshly turned 

 dark furrows ; above the distant plough, the share of 

 which, polished like a silver mirror by friction with the 

 clods, reflects the sunshine, flashing a heliograph message 

 of plenty from the earth ; everywhere brown dots, and 

 each a breathing creature — larks ceaselessly singing, and 

 all unable to set forth their joy. Swift as is the vibration 

 of their throats, they cannot pour the notes fast enough 

 to express their eager welcome. As a shower falls from 

 the sky, so falls the song of the larks. There is no end 

 to them : they are everywhere ; over every acre away 

 across the plain to the downs, and up on the highest hill. 

 Every crust of English bread has been sung over at its 

 birth in the green blade by a lark. 



If one looked again in June, the clover itself, a 

 treasure of beauty and sweetness, would be out, and the 

 south wind would come over acres of flower — acres of 

 clover, beans, tares, purple trifolium, far-away crimson 



