OLD HEDGEROWS. 61 



boys when on the hunt, eager to know all that can 

 be known of the interesting and beautiful things 

 around them animals, birds, fish, insects, and last, 

 but not least, flowers ? When a boy tells you he 

 has looked for certain things and not found them, 

 you need not waste your time in looking for them : 

 snowdrops, Lent lilies, primroses, violets, both blue 

 and white all these, and others in their seasons, 

 were found by us boys for our sisters, or those the 

 boys considered their friends. 



If we did not find them in sufficient quantities in 

 one spot, with a shout we would dash off to another. 

 Great handfuls of kingcups and cuckoo-flowers were 

 gathered, to be placed in old-fashioned jugs, with a 

 fringe of glossy dark-green leaves of the kingcups 

 round them : we boys knew where the hedges faced 

 south, and where the meadows were sheltered by 

 these. If the smaller ones reached home without 

 their elder brothers, and with their little knuckles 

 stuck close to their noses, sobbing, the ash-plant oil 

 would be freely administered. But by such as we 

 boys were, the history of the hedgerow sanctuaries, 

 as they once existed, have been handed down : the 

 young life of two generations climbed up them, 



