112 



FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



AMONG THE NUTS. 



TllE nuts arc ripening once more, and it is almost the 

 time to go a-gipsying the summer passes like the 

 shadow of a cloud \vhich strikes the edge of the yellow 

 wheat and comes over and is gone ; it docs not give you 

 time to rub out a single car of corn. Before it is pos- 

 sible to gather the harvest of thought and observation 

 the summer has passed, and we must bind the hastily 

 stitched book with the crimson leaves of autumn. Under 

 these very hazel boughs only yesterday, i.e. in May, 

 looking for cuckoo-sorrel, as the wood-sorrel is called, 

 there rolled down a brown last year's nut from among 

 the moss of the bank. In the side of this little brown 

 nut, at its thicker end, a round hole had been made with 

 a sharp tool which had left the marks of its chiselling. 

 Through this hole the kernel had been extracted by the 

 skilful mouse. Two more nuts were found on the same 

 bank, bored by the same carpenter. The holes looked 

 as if he had turned the nut round and round as he 

 gnawed. Unless the nut had shrunk, the hole was not 

 large enough to pull the kernel out all at once ; it must 

 have been eaten little by little in many mouthfuls. The 

 same amount of nibbling would have sawn a circle round 

 the nut, and so, dividing the shell in two, would have let 

 the kernel out bodily a plan more to our fancy; but 



