NATURE NEAR LONDON ^^ 



south of London are in the middle of the summer 

 comparatively bare of colour. They should be 

 visited in spring and autumn. 



Nor do the meadows seem to produce so many 

 varieties of grass as farther to the south-west. 

 But beetles of every kind and size, from the great 

 stag beetle, helplessly floundering through the even- 

 ing air and clinging to your coat, down to the 

 green, bronze, and gilded species that hasten across 

 the path, appear extremely numerous. Warm, 

 dry sands, light soils, and furze and heath are prob- 

 ably favourable to them. 



From this roadside I have seldom heard the 

 corncrake, and never once the grasshopper lark. 

 These two birds are so characteristic of the 

 meadows in south-western counties that a summer 

 evening seems silent to me without the " crake, 

 crake ! " of the one and the singular sibilous rat- 

 tle of the other. But they come to other places 

 not far distant from the road, and one summer a 

 grasshopper-lark could be heard in some mead- 

 ows where I had not heard it the two preceding 

 seasons. On the mounds field crickets cry 

 persistently. 



At the end of the hedge which is near a brook, 



a sedge-reedling takes up his residence in the 



spring. The sedge-reedlings here begin to call 



very early; the first date I have down is the i6th 



_ S 6- 



