62 THE LIFE OF THE FIELDS. 



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 landrails. 

 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 parsley 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. 



The yellowhammer is the most persistent indi- 

 vidually, but I think the blackbirds when listened 

 to are the masters of the fields. Before one can 

 finish another begins, like the summer ripples succeed- 

 ing behind each other, so that the melodious sound 

 merely changes its position. Now here, now in the 

 corner, then across the field, again in the distant 

 copse, where it seems about to sink, when it rises again 

 almost at hand. Like a great human artist, the black- 

 bird makes no effort, being fully conscious that his 

 liquid tone cannot be matched. He utters a few deli- 

 cious notes, and carelessly quits the green stage of the 

 oak till it pleases him to sing again. Without the 

 blackbird, in whose throat the sweetness of the green 

 fields dwells, the days would be only partly summer. 



