~-^g NATURE NEAR LONDON 



By the low black wooden walls a little chaff has 

 been spilt, and has blown out and mingles with 

 the dust of the road. Loose straws lie across the 

 footpath, trodden flat by passing feet; straws have 

 wandered across the road and lodged on the mound, 

 and others have roamed still farther round the 

 corner. Between the gatepost and the wall that 

 encloses the rickyard more straws are jammed, and 

 yet more are borne up by the nettles beneath it. 



Mosses have grown over the old red brick wall, 

 both on the top and following the lines of the 

 mortar, and bunches of wall grasses flourish along 

 the top. The wheat, and barley, and hay carted 

 home to the rickyard contain the seeds of innum- 

 erable plants, many of which, dropping to the 

 ground, come up next year. The trodden earth 

 round where the ricks stood seems favourable to 

 their early appearance ; the first poppy blooms 

 here, though its colour is paler than those which 

 come afterwards in the fields. 



In spring most of the ricks are gone, threshed 

 and sold, but there remains the vast pile of straw 

 always straw and the three-cornered stump 

 of a hay-rick which displays bands of different 

 hues, one above the other, like the strata of a 

 geological map. Some of the hay was put up 

 damp, some in good condition, and some had been 

 browned by bad weather before being carted. 

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