THE TURNING TIDE 209 



stock. Above them spreads the darker July canopy of goose- 

 grass and bindweed and tangled climbing persicaria and 

 bryonies and woody nightshade, dense enough when looped 

 between the shrubs or branches of the hedgerow to keep out 

 all but the heaviest rain. The soil beneath the violet and 

 primrose leaves, which in April was fertile and plastic, is now 

 hard and crumbling to the touch ; in the July heats even the 

 moss is as dry as tinder. It is a dead city of nature, except for 

 that promise of life in the sappy seed-heads. There seems 

 no movement or change or any share in the life of the season 

 outside. The dry earth is silvered with old snail trails, 

 traced weeks before, while the earth was still damp and 

 spring-like ; and often the tented space includes a thrush's 

 anvil-stone, littered with fragments of shell where the bird 

 came to break up its prey before the spot was sealed in 

 shadow. The thrushes will not trouble to push through the 

 thick screen of foliage to reach their earlier feeding-places 

 when summer has submerged them. They choose new 

 stones in the open shrubbery paths. In the world outside 

 there are still many stages of summer and harvest before 

 autumn sweeps all away ; but in the thickets the growth of 

 the year has already brought itself to a standstill by its own 

 luxuriance. 



