3 o8 SUMMER 



the moistened earth with their suckers is one of the most 

 distinctive features of strong summer drought. 



Expedients of thirsty birds and animals often recall hard 

 winter frosts, when the earth is sealed by our climate's 

 contrary extreme. Rooks and jackdaws, debarred from 

 probing in the soil, haunt refuse-heaps in the fringes of 

 towns, just as they do in a hard January ; and in the heat 

 and glare by the railway line, they bicker over greasy 

 sandwich papers containing scraps of passengers' lunches 

 thrown from the carriage windows. Moles dive deeper 



into the earth, as in frost; but sometimes they take an 

 opposite course, and thrust their way above ground in the 

 crumbling surface layer of the soil in rides in woods, and 

 among the roots of the grasses. They probably find 

 beetles in such places ; hedgehogs hunt the same spots 

 after dusk, and beetles certainly form a large part of the 

 urchin's diet. 



In blazing July weather most wild flowers cut short 

 their development of foliage, and concentrate their stunted 

 energies on blossoming and the ripening of seed. Plants of 

 swift annual growth from a shallow root, like the common 

 mullein and the fennel, grow to hardly half their height in a 



