238 THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. 



the sunshine ; creeping avens, with buttercup- 

 like flowers and long stems that straggle across 

 the ditch, and in autumn are tipped with a 

 small ball of soft spines ; mints, strong-scented 

 and unmistakable ; yarrow, white and some- 

 times a little lilac, whose flower is perhaps 

 almost the last that the bee visits. In the 

 middle of October I have seen a wild bee on a 

 last stray yarrow." 



Again we are in the forest, and again 

 ' cataloguing ' : 



" The beechnuts are already falling in the 

 forest, and the swine are beginning to search 

 for them while yet the harvest lingers. The 

 nuts are formed by midsummer, and now, the 

 husk opening, the brown angular kernel drops 

 out. Many of the husks fall, too ; others 

 remain on the branches till next spring. 

 Under the beeches the ground is strewn with 

 the mast, as hard almost to walk on as pebbles. 

 Kude and uncouth as swine are in themselves, 

 somehow they look different under trees. The 

 brown leaves amid which they rout, and the 

 brown- tinted fern behind, lend something of 



