XXXIII. 



THE KERNING OF THE WHEAT. 



A NARROW single- file pathway leads obliquely as a 

 short cut across the lower corn-field to the bridge, and 

 on either hand the mellowing corn rises sharply beside 

 it like a wall, with its tall shocks now just turning from 

 pale green to golden brown before the ripening sun and 

 the warping wind. As I pass through it I cannot avoid 

 trampling down a haulm or two of the overhanging straw 

 here and there, so closely does the crop encroach upon the 

 track that threads among it. There are bright yellow 

 corn-marigolds scattered in between the heads, and great 

 scarlet poppies by the edge, and dark bluebottles further 

 afield, and lilac scabiouses overtopping even the tallest 

 beards. Beneath, too, there is an interloping mat of 

 smaller weeds : lithe climbing buckwheat or black 

 bindweed, with its barbed and heart-shaped leaves ex- 

 actly mimicking the lesser convolvulus, whose funnel- 

 like blossoms open by its side ; stiff wiry knot-grass 

 forming here and there a ragged undersward ; creeping 

 toadflax pressing tight to the ground its broad leaves 

 and snap-dragon flowers ; red bartsia sucking out the 

 life-blood of the corn with its parasitic rootlets and cling- 

 ing suckers. For even the most carefully tended 

 wheat-fields are always more or less thickly choked with 

 those innumerable weeds of cultivation which no tillage 

 can ever eradicate ; hardy Asiatic straylings whose seeds 

 have followed the grains and pulses over Europe and 

 America, and whose constitution successfully defies every 



