i8o WILD BIRDS 



and the hamlet corners, the keeper's cottage, the bit 

 of Early English church spire among the trees, the 

 hamlet children scrambling about among the ash 

 and hazel spinneys, with such loving truth that to 

 look at his pictures sets the looker longing to be 

 there in spring or early summer. 



He communicates the thing to you a rare and 

 peculiar art. 



Some of Mrs. Allingham's colour pictures have 

 the same quality. I looked down from a high lawn 

 in Surrey in May, and said to a friend that the 

 hamlet beneath looked as if it ought to have been 

 painted by Mrs. Allingham. "The Allinghams 

 lived there," he answered. 



The Birket Foster end of the lane has a very deep 

 hedge on one side, a hedge which carries an immense 

 weight of wild clematis. On the other side it is 

 different. There is a band of grass, broad at first, 

 but narrowing into nothing at the top of the lane, 

 and behind this band are thick beds of nettles in 

 summer, then some dense blackthorns and briers ; 

 bet wen these and the field above for it is a sunken 

 lane at this upper end is a spinney of hazel and 

 dogwood and ash stems, where the ground is covered 

 in April and May by the little green moschatel, and 

 elsewhere by bluebells. All this upper end of the 

 lane lives with birds in May and June and July. 

 It is the same with hundreds of these old and 

 neglected farm roads of England. 



They hold now in December, perhaps, a pair of 

 hedge sparrows, a few robins, a few wrens, and a 



