ATTAR OF HAY 



suckle is in its element ; as a moral writer on field-flower 

 favourites well remarks: " It seems to shed a happy 

 quiet and contentment." It is sweetest in the evening, 

 when intent on luring moths to its honey- vats, and 

 especially after rain : we can almost hear the raindrops 

 in Izaak Walton's description of a shower on his honey- 

 suckle hedge, " which fell so gently on the teeming 

 earth, and gave yet a sweeter smell to the lovely 

 flowers " what time the birds were holding their 

 friendly contention with an echo. 



TRAGEDY stalks with the mowers, as they begin to cut 

 the fields of hay, tearing away the veil 

 Death in which has given sanctuary to rabbit, field- 

 the mouse, hare, weasel or hedgehog, and many 



Hay field a bird. The farmer finds what he calls 

 " stolen " nests of poultry or guinea-fowl. 

 The gamekeeper is fearful for the sitting partridge that 

 will sit so closely as to be caught by the mowers' knives. 

 Their eggs, and those of larks and pipits, possibly of a 

 corncrake, may be the perquisite of the rooks, which 

 march and countermarch across the shorn field, seeking 

 also nests with young voles. In the evening come other 

 hunters, like the farm cats, to pick up parent mice 

 searching for their nests and young. 



THE sight of a young cuckoo on a haycock, being fed 

 by a meadow-pipit, impressed one with the 

 The idea that it is an ill-mannered bird. If it 



Gowk had had the sense and courtesy to crouch 



down, bringing its head to the little foster- 

 mother's level, she could have fed it easily; but as it 

 lifted its ugly head to the utmost height, she was 



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