92 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



fall foul of millions in a second, it being sensitive, 

 itself, only to thousands. We do, indeed, admit the 

 " Zeitgeist" but if ever we allow for it when we 

 play the critic, it is always in favour of our own 

 perspicuity and this against any number of past 

 spiritual giants. This is an age in which most things 

 are questioned. Is it not time for that dogma of 

 what we call " the test of time " by which everybody 

 understands his own time to be questioned, too ? 



"In April," says the rhyme, "the cuckoo shows 

 his bill." Somewhat late April, in my experience, 

 at least about this bleak, open part of Suffolk, 

 which, however, contrary to what might be ex- 

 pected, seems loved by the bird. Almost opposite 

 to my house, but at some little distance from it, 

 across the river, there is a wide expanse of open, 

 sandy land, more or less thinly clothed with a long, 

 coarse, wiry grass, and dotted, irregularly, at very 

 wide intervals, with elder and hawthorn trees and 

 bushes a desolate prospect, which I prefer, myself, 

 to one of cornfields, unless the corn is all full of 

 poppies and corn-flowers, which, indeed, it is 

 here, and I am told it is bad agriculture. If that 

 be so, then, h bas the good ! Part of this space, 

 where the sand encroaches on the grass, till it is 

 shared, at last, only by short, dry lichen, which 

 the rabbits browse, I call the amphitheatre, it 

 being roughly circular in shape. One solitary 

 crab-apple tree from the seed, no doubt, of the 

 cultivated kind growing on its outer edge, is a 

 perfect glory of blossom in the spring, and be- 

 comes, then, quite a landmark. This barren space is 

 a favourite gathering-ground of the stone-curlews ; 



