THROUGH THE YEAR 181 



passing linnet ; whilst a forlorn yellowhammer 

 flies up at a gap in the hedge. By and by they will 

 teem with birds once more. Nightingales nest on 

 the dead leaves in the spinney, whitethroats in the 

 nettle and coarse grass and old plant stems' tangle 

 at its edge, linnets half a dozen pairs and more 

 in the billowing clematis, wrens in the exposed 

 chalk wall at the top of the lane, and in the few 

 ivied tree trunks there. It was at this spot I found 

 a wren's nest in the ivy one day in early summer, 

 and saw a family of seven or eight young birds 

 bubble out and flit into the thick grass and 

 umbelliferous plants ; they returned to this nest 

 later, though it looked not easy for a young bird, 

 which possibly had not been out before, to spring 

 up into the ivy nearly two yards from the ground 

 and scramble through the little moss entrance. 



COMPETITION 



Of all lessons in the plant world I know of none 

 more striking than that in the modern oak wood. At 

 mid-winter when nearly all the leaf is off only a 

 very few oaks carry their dead leaves, like the beech 

 hedge, through winter the oak wood may impress 

 its lesson on us more than at any other time, as we 

 can see so much of the build of the trees. Roughly, 

 to-day in England there are three kinds of oak wood. 

 First, the wood where among the trees is a more or 

 less heavy crop of underwood, as ash, hazel, oak, 

 dogwood, " withy," and birch ; second, the wood 

 where there is hardly any underwood, only spreading 



