NATURE NEAR LONDON 



By one corner of the copse there is an oak, 

 hollow within, but still green and flourishing. The 

 hollow is black and charred ; some mischievous 

 boys must have lighted a fire inside it, just as the 

 ploughboys do in the far-away country. A little 

 pond in the meadow close by is so overhung by 

 another oak, and so surrounded with bramble and 

 hawthorn, that the water lies in perpetual shade. 

 It is just the spot where, if rabbits were about, one 

 might be found sitting out on the bank under the 

 brambles. This overhanging oak was broken by 

 the famous October snow, 1880, further splintered 

 by the gales of the next year, and its trunk is now 

 split from top to bottom as if with wedges. 



These meadows in spring are full of cowslips, 

 and in one part the meadow-orchis flourishes. 

 The method of making cowslip balls is universally 

 known to children, from the most remote hamlet 

 to the very verge of London, and the little children 

 who dance along the greensward by the road 

 here, if they chance to touch a nettle, at once 

 search for a dock leaf to lay on it and assuage the 

 smart. Country children, and indeed older folk, 

 call the foliage of the knotted figwort cutfinger 

 leaves, as they are believed to assist the cure of a 

 cut or sore. 



Raspberry suckers shoot up in one part of the 

 copse; the fruit is doubtless eaten by the birds. 

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