240 SUMMER 



Come then ! the heather bloom 



Woos with its wild perfume, 

 Fragrant and blithesome they welcome shall be ; 



Gaily the fountain sheen 



Leaps from the mountain green 

 Come to our home of the moorland and lea,' 



J. W. C., British Sport Past and Present. 



THE COUNTRY CALENDAR 



ON August ist the close time for birds ends. You may not shoot 

 grouse till the I2th, or partridges till September, or pheasants till 

 October, but for the great host of birds it is presumed that nesting 

 is over and the young are in their full powers when August opens. 

 Perhaps some day other birds, especially duck, will be protected a 

 little later, till grouse day. It would be an advantage. For summer 

 is still summer, and the young still young. The sun shines hot 

 and the nights are dewy cool. 



The greatest change of the year, in regard to the face of the 

 country, comes in August. It is the harvest month ; and with the 

 fall of oats and barley and wheat, and the ranging of the stooks on the 

 stubble, the expression of rural England quite changes. The substi- 

 tution of bare stubble for standing crops alters the way of life of many 

 birds, and yet more of rats and mice. The little harvest-mouse, 

 almost the smallest of all our mammals, which makes a tiny nest 

 for its miniature self on a corn-stalk unbent by the burden, is often 

 carried off to the stack where it lives with countless field-mice and 

 some rats, quite pleased with the new quarters. When the truce 

 ends on August ist, migration begins. A few cuckoos went in July, 

 and migration is in some sort a process without abrupt beginnings ; 

 but we may say that migration becomes an obvious thing in August, 

 only less noticeable than the migration of men and women from 

 London to Scotland. The swift goes, the cuckoo goes. In vegetation 

 it is the most slumberous month of the year. The tide of growth 

 is stiller than in July, and the activity of autumn change has scarcely 

 begun. At the seaside, to which so many gravitate by natural 

 desire, it is rather different. Deep-sea fish come nearer the shore, 

 and the life of the pools about the beach is richer. There is growth 

 too in the seaweeds, and spawn covers their surface and floats on 

 the water in amazing prodigality. The downs have some of the 

 freshness of the seashore. In August we see many more of the 



