188 WILD BIRDS 



A reaper would take a " land " in a cornfield, which 

 was about 6 feet across, and work down the whole 

 length of the field, the woman reaping her half-acre 

 a day, the man his full acre. 



THE COLOURIST WINTER 



In painting the woods winter is the subtlest of 

 colourists : its supreme pictures excel those of 

 autumn and spring, still more do they excel those 

 of summer. The painted woods of January do not 

 appear to burn with those live hues, spirituous fires, 

 that touch the April woods before the red buds unroll 

 to green leaf ; and they show nothing like the 

 complexity of colour that lights up the beech, birch, 

 and, above all, the oak woods in October and early 

 November. Moreover, for weeks at a stretch there 

 may be little colour on winter woods, only the 

 subdued greys and browns of the bare stems and 

 the tree trunks : whereas the colour effects of 

 autumn last for weeks, and are good to see even 

 on the worst days and in unfavouring lights. But 

 there are certain afternoons in winter when great 

 tracts of woodland do appear in a more wonderful 

 dress of colour than they wear at any other season. 

 Many of us know well the dress of the great beech 

 and oak woods of the New Forest around Lynd- 

 hurst, Sway, and Ladycross in winter. I think 

 it was Wise, in his book on the New Forest the 

 best of New Forest books who wrote of the blue 

 dress of the woods in winter ; and, indeed, they often 

 appear almost a pure blue not merely the purple 



