130 The Amateur Poacher. 



hedge. Till the loth of March not a spot of colour 

 was to be seen. About that time bright yellow 

 flowers appeared suddenly on the clayey banks and 

 waste places, and among the hard clay lumps of 

 fields ploughed but not sown. 



The brilliant yellow formed a striking contrast 

 to the dull brown of the clods, there being no 

 green leaf to moderate the extremes of tint These 

 were the blossoms of the coltsfoot, that sends up a 

 stalk surrounded with faintly rosy scales. Several 

 such stalks often spring from a single clod : lift the 

 heavy clod, and you have half a dozen flowers, a 

 whole bunch, without a single leaf. Usually the 

 young grasses and the seed-leaves of plants have 

 risen up and supply a general green ; but this year 

 the coltsfoot bloomed unsupported, studding the dark 

 ground with gold. 



Now the frogs are busy, and the land lizards come 

 forth. Even these the moucher sometimes captures ; 

 for there is nothing so strange but that some one 

 selects it for a pet. The mad March hares scamper 

 about in broad daylight over the corn, whose pale 

 green blatdes rise in straight lines a few inches above 

 the soiL They are chasing their skittish loves, in- 

 stead of soberly dreaming the day away in a bunch 

 of grass. The ploughman walks in the furrow his 



