i8o WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



yellow buttercups, and strewn with bloom shaken by 

 the wind from the trees is not this better than formal- 

 patterned carpets, and the white flat ceilings that 

 weigh so heavily upon the sight ? Listen how happy 

 the goldfinches are in the orchard. Summer after 

 summer they build in the same trees bushy-headed 

 codlings ; generation after generation has been born 

 there and gone forth to enjoy in turn the pleasures of 

 the field. 



A year nay, a single summer must be a long time 

 in their chronology, for they are so very, very busy ; 

 a bright, sunshiny day must be like a month to them : 

 now coquetting, now splashing at the sandy edge of a 

 shallow streamlet till the golden feathers glisten from 

 the water and the red topknot shines ; away again 

 along the hedgerow searching for seeds, singing all 

 the while, and the tiny heart beating so rapidly as to 

 compress twice as many beats of emotion into the 

 minute as our sluggish organizations are capable of. 

 Though a path much frequented by the household 

 passes beneath the trees in which they build, they 

 show no fear. 



Just as men from various causes congregate in par- 

 ticular places, so there are spots in the fields in the 

 country generally which appear to specially attract 

 birds of all kinds. Wide districts are almost bare of 

 them : on a single farm you may often find a great 

 meadow which scarcely seems to have a bird in it, 

 while another little oddly-cornered field is populous 

 with them. This orchard and garden at Wick is 



