2 NATURE NEAR LONDON. 



sheltered by the bushes, has endured the winter's 

 frosts. The lads pull them off, and break the stems, 

 to watch the white " milk " well up, the whole plant 

 being full of acrid juice. Whorls of woodruff and 

 grass-like leaves of stitchwort are rising; the latter 

 holds but feebly to the earth, and even in snatching 

 the flower the roots sometimes give way and the plant 

 is lifted with it. 



Upon either hand the mounds are so broad that 

 they in places resemble covers rather than hedges, 

 thickly grown with bramble and briar, hazel and haw- 

 thorn, above which the straight trunks of young oaks 

 and Spanish chestnuts stand in crowded but careless 

 ranks. The leaves which dropped in the preceding 

 autumn from these trees still lie on the ground under 

 the bushes, dry and brittle, and the blackbirds search- 

 ing about among them cause as much rustling as if 

 some animal were routing about. 



As the month progresses these wide mounds become 

 completely green, hawthorn and bramble, briar and 

 hazel put forth their leaves, and the eye can no longer 

 .see into the recesses. But above, the oaks and edible 

 chestnuts are still dark and leafless, almost black by 

 contrast with the vivid green beneath them. Upon 

 their bare boughs the birds are easily seen, but the 

 moment they descend among the bushes are difficult 

 to find. Chaffinches call and challenge continually 

 these trees are their favourite resort and yellowham- 

 mers flit along the underwood. 



Behind the broad hedge are the ploughed fields they 

 love, alternating with meadows down whose hedges 

 again a stream of birds is always flowing to the lane. 



