MAGPIE FIELDS 



partridges are numerous this year in the fields bor- 

 dering the highway, and which are not watched by 

 keepers. Thinking of the partridges makes me 

 notice the ant-hills. There were comparatively 

 few this season, but on the 4th of August, which 

 was a sunny day, I saw the inhabitants of a hill 

 beside the road bringing out the eggs into the sun- 

 shine. They could not do it fast enough ; some 

 ran out with eggs, and placed them on the top of 

 the little mound, and others seized eggs that had 

 been exposed sufficiently and hurried with them 

 into the interior. 



Woody nightshade grows in quantities along this 

 road, and, apparently, all about the outskirts of the 

 town. There is not a hedge without it, and it 

 creeps over the mounds of earth at the sides of the 

 highways. Some fumitory appeared this summer 

 in a field of barley ; till then I had not observed 

 any for some time in that district. This plant, 

 once so common, but now nearly eradicated by cul- 

 ture, has a soft pleasant green. A cornflower, too, 

 flowered in another field, quite a treasure to find 

 where these beautiful blue flowers are so scarce. 

 The last day of August there was a fierce combat 

 on the footpath between a wasp and a brown moth. 

 They rolled over and struggled, now one, now the 

 other uppermost, and the wasp appeared to sting the 

 moth repeatedly. The moth, however, got away. 

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