100 The Fringe of the Road 



green shimmer in the cooler weather to a deep 

 red glow, like the butt of a burning cigar, in the 

 nights of July heat. In winter the snow by the 

 roadside bears the traces of each bird or animal 

 that has crossed it, in haste or at leisure, since the 

 hour when it ceased to fall. Besides the well-known 

 prints of fox, rabbit, or rook, the passer-by can 

 note where the sparrow-hawk has plucked and eaten 

 some brightly coloured greenfinch, or where a 

 pheasant, suddenly startled from the crest of the 

 bank, has struck down upon the soft snow in fright, 

 leaving a spread-eagle print. Where a quiet road 

 runs through deep tracts of woodland the strips of 

 grass at the sides attract the same life of bird and 

 beast as the open ground of one of the inner glades. 

 On the shaded turf of May, softly bright with 

 purple ground ivy and prunella, the nightingale 

 flits down to feed from the holly-bough like a smaller 

 and shyer thrush. Red stoats and weasels press 

 undulating across the roadway on some savage 

 quest. And when twilight falls, and the nightin- 

 gales are answering one another from tract to tract 

 of the wood, grey, moving shapes, like the dusk 

 become concrete and animate, reveal the hedgehogs 

 blithely trotting on the turf plots and searching 

 with keen, hairy faces for the creeping life of the 

 night. 



Where space is gained in narrow lanes by cutting 

 back the banks, the passing of a few years will 

 often clothe the fresh surface with new flowers, if 

 it is not cut at too steep an angle. But if the new 

 slope of the bank is so near the perpendicular that 



