CHAPTER X. 



The wood-pile Lizards Sheds and rickyard The witches' brier 

 Insects Plants, flowers, and fruit. 



farmhouse at Wick has the gardens and 

 A orchard already mentioned upon one side, and 

 on the other are the carthouses, sheds, and rickyard. 

 Between these latter and the dwelling runs a broad 

 roadway for the wagons to enter and leave the fields, 

 and on its border stands a great wood-pile. The 

 fagots cut in the winter from the hedges are here 

 stacked up as high as the roof of a cottage, and near 

 by lies a heap of ponderous logs waiting to be split 

 for firewood. From exposure to the weather the bark 

 of the fagot sticks has turned black, and is rapidly 

 decaying, and under it innumerable insects have made 

 their homes. 



For these, probably, the wrens visit the wood-pile 

 continually : if in passing any one strikes the fagots 

 with a stick, a wren will generally fly out on the 

 opposite side. They creep like mice in between the 

 fagots there are numerous interstices and thus 

 sometimes pass right through a corner of the stack. 

 Sometimes a pole which has been lying by for a length 



