From Fox's Earth 



the naturalist and the philosopher. So the olden 

 shilfas acted on the Saturday afternoon, when, 

 from a week's crawling like snail unwillingly to 

 school, one was free to go at large. So the 

 blackbird drifted down the shadowy ditch. The 

 exile sees it in visions over half the globe, and 

 sighs. 



Migrants are in the lane. They are not alto- 

 gether our own birds. They stay not with us 

 through good and evil report. Through the 

 blustering days, when the snell wind blows and 

 the slant rain falls, when the linnet's flight note is 

 over the adjoining field and the greenfinches 

 gather to the stackyard, they are absent. They 

 come in summer, and every summer. So that 

 the summer would not be itself without them. 



Chief among them is the white throat. He is 

 the migrant of the Scots lane. Seems as though 

 the brambles had woven the elastic yet forbidding 

 network across the ditch for a nesting area, that 

 the grass grew long for shelter and the nettles 

 for protection. By the time he comes, plant life 

 is on the rush, the growth is bewildering, and 

 the nester is at fault. The mate dances half 

 mockingly. Half in spite the boy calls him a 

 "bletherer." Several nests are in the lane; two 

 deep in the bramble cushion behind a chevaux de 

 frise of prickles ; one in the long grass. 



None of the characteristic birds of English 

 lanes are there. One scarcely misses them. One 



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