50 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



of the grasses are varied in shape : some tend to a 

 point — the foxtails — some are hard and cylindrical ; 

 others, avoiding the club shape, put forth the slen- 

 derest branches with fruit of seed at the ends, which 

 tremble as the air goes by. Their stalks are ripening 

 and becoming of the colour of hay while yet the long 

 blades remain green. 



Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the foxtails 

 are succeeded by foxtails, the narrow blades by narrow 

 blades, but never become monotonous ; sorrel stands by 

 sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This bed of veronica at 

 the foot of the ancient apple has a whole handful of 

 flowers, and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak fol- 

 lows oak and elm ranks with elm, but the woodlands 

 are pleasant ; however many times reduplicated, their 

 beauty only increases. So, too, the summer days ; the 

 sun rises on the same grasses and green hedges, there 

 is the same blue sky, but did we ever have enough of 

 them ? No, not in a hundred years ! There seems 

 always a depth, somewhere, unexplored, a thicket that 

 has not been seen through, a corner full of ferns, a 

 quaint old hollow tree, which may give us something. 

 Bees go by me as I stand under the apple, but they 

 pass on for the most part bound on a long journey, 

 across to the clover fields or up to the thyme lands ; 

 only a few go down into the mowing-grass. The hive 

 bees are the most impatient of insects ; they cannot 

 bear to entangle their wings beating against grasses or 

 boughs. Not one will enter a hedge. They like an 

 open and level surface, places cropped by sheep, the 

 sward by the roadside, fields of clover, where the 

 flower is not deep under grass. 



