16 The Strife of March 



us most often with foretastes in the heart of winter 

 and distant hints and promises which are welcomed 

 by the song-birds one by one. But when by a freak 

 of atmosphere, we are merged in the continental 

 winter, we lose those sea-borne prophecies of months 

 to come and the birds' responding signals. Spring 

 comes with mainland suddenness, and is answered 

 by their voices in one peal. 



Though fine March weather seems full of colour, 

 it is curiously local and concentrated. Most of the 

 brightness of the month comes from the power of the 

 equinoctial sun on a naked landscape. By the end 

 of winter most of the fallen leaves in the woods are 

 matted together into a faint brown carpet, of the 

 colour of withered grass, that is many shades 

 paler and feebler than the nut-brown drifts lit up by 

 the thin December sunshine. The gleam of green 

 on the autumn-sown cornfields is not appreciably 

 stronger than it was before the mid- winter frosts ; 

 and the dotted root- fields have been almost cleared 

 by the sheep. From most of the pastures almost 

 every tinge of green has vanished under the long 

 succession of winter frosts and rains ; and this is 

 one of the greatest contrasts with the October and 

 November landscapes, in which the watery autumn 

 grass is often more vivid than the midsummer hay- 

 crop. Where a long range of downs stands over a 

 lowland landscape or the channel seas, their colour 

 at this time of the year is a delicate fawn or tan that 

 makes subdued harmonies and contrasts with the 

 tints of the distant sky. If we stand upon the same 

 sere hills, we see that though the underlying fibres 



