THE PAGEANT OF SUMMER 



must be larks ; but their notes are not 

 powerful enough to reach me, though 

 they would were it not for the song in the 

 hedges, the hum of innumerable insects, 

 and the ceaseless 'crake, crake' of land- 

 rails. There are at least two landrails 

 in the mowing grass; one of them just 

 now seemed coming straight towards the 

 apple-tree, and I expected in a minute to 

 see the grass move, when the bird turned 

 aside and entered the tufts and wild pars- 

 ley by the hedge. Thence the call has 

 come without a moment's pause, 'crake, 

 crake,' till the thick hedge seems filled 

 with it. Tits have visited the apple- 

 tree over my head, a wren has sung in 

 the willow, or rather on a dead branch 

 projecting lower down than the leafy 

 boughs, and a robin across under the 

 elms in the opposite hedge. Elms are a 

 favourite tree of robins, not the upper 

 branches, but those that grow down the 

 trunk, and are the first to have leaves in 

 spring. 



45 



