126 FIELD AND HEDGEROW 



these oaks, as if an impatient hand had cast them into 

 the sky ; then down they fell again, with a ceaseless 

 whistling and clucking ; up they went and down they 

 came, lost in the deep green foliage as if they had 

 dropped in the sea. The long level of the wheat-field 

 plain stretched out from my feet towards the far-away 

 Downs, so level that the first hedge shut off the fields 

 beyond ; and every now and then over these hedges there 

 rose up the white forms of sea-gulls drifting to and fro 

 among the elms. White sea-gulls — birds of divination, 

 you might say — a good symbol of the times, for now we 

 plough the ocean. The barren sea ! In the Greek poets 

 you may find constant reference to it as that which could 

 not be reaped or sowed. Ulysses, to betoken his mad* 

 ness, took his plough down to the shore and drew 

 furrows in the sand — the sea that even Demeter, great 

 goddess, could not sow nor bring to any fruition. Yet 

 now the ocean is our wheat-field and ships are our barns. 

 The sea-gull should be painted on the village tavern 

 sign instead of the golden wheatsheaf. 



There could be no more flat and uninteresting sur- 

 face than this field, a damp wet brown, water slowly 

 draining out of the furrows, not a bird that I can see. 

 No hare certainly, or partridge, or even a rabbit — nothing 

 to sit or crouch — on that cold surface, tame and level as 

 the brown cover of a book. They like something more 

 human and comfortable ; just as we creep into nooks and 

 corners of rooms and into cosy arm-chairs, so they like 

 tufts or some growth of shelter, or mounds that are dry, 

 between hedges where there is a bite for them. I can 

 trace nothing on this surface, so heavily washed by late 

 rain. Let now the harriers come, and instantly the 

 hounds' second sense of smell picks up the invisible sign 

 of the hare that has crossed it in the night or early dawn, 



