250 



THE NATURE BOOK 



This surely is never frieiuUy \\'essex 

 soil ; rather some " waste laud where no 

 man comes nor hath come since the 

 making of the world." A stillness as of 

 the Ancient of Days, before that imper- 

 tinent accident called Life had appeared, 

 to break, for a feverish hour, the eternal 



under the earth ; the adamantine crust 

 is pierced by myriads of fairy spears. 

 Straying fancy comes home ; the 

 ghostly lunar desert resolves itself into 

 a plain Wiltshire plough-field ; and 

 that eerie stillness which had seemed 

 the lifelessness and silence of some far- 



1 <VftbB< ;'1ij ij|*i 



THE COKN-FIELD PATH. 



ikoiOj;rapk by Frith &■ Co., Rdgate. 



silence : a strangeness as of some far- 

 distant planet where warmth and move- 

 ment could never be ; or some ghostly 

 plain ringed about with the frozen moun- 

 tains of the moon. 



Faint, far-off sounds — the barking of a 

 dog, or bleat from a sheep-fold — though 

 sufficing to set the steps mechanically in 

 motion, do not serve to bring the fancy 

 back from these " wanderings in worlds 

 not realised." and as the darkness deepens, 

 the strange sense of desolation and " other- 

 worldliness " increases. 



But suddenly the eye falls upon a 

 tiny spray of green upon the frozen 

 ground ; there is another, and another : 

 this seeming barren plain is teeming 

 with new life ; thread-like rootlets 

 are striking down to find the waters 



away planet is but the winter Hush of 

 the Corn. 



Again the familiar hills, and the stroke 

 of the clock which has meanwhile marked 

 so many hours of toil and rest for the 

 village below. Again the edge of the 

 downs and the beginning of the wheat. 

 But there is no crossing the field now, for 

 midsimimer has come ; a genial season 

 has favoured the crop, and waist-high 

 spreads the sea of living green : a little 

 scantier on the upper edge of the field, 

 where the plough has thrown the earth _ 

 downhill, and the stalks spring out of the 

 dry and crumbling chalk ; but beyond, as 

 the soil increases in fatness, thickly ser- 

 ried, full, and juicy with a deep blue- 

 green bloom u])on curving blade and rigid 



