94 THE LAND'S END 



with heads drawn in and plumage bunched out, they 

 were like golden images of birds, as if the sun had 

 poured a golden-coloured light into their loose 

 feathers to make them shine. 



The grey wagtail and the goldfinch, in small 

 numbers, both beautiful birds, were wintering here, 

 but they could not compare with those transfigured 

 yellowhammers I had seen. 



As for the vulgar sparrow, nothing not even the 

 miracle-working sun could make him brilliant or 

 beautiful to look at, and I have indeed acquired the 

 habit of not looking and not seeing the undesired 

 thing. That is, in the country : in London it is 

 different ; there I can be thankful for the sparrow 

 where he does us (and the better birds) no harm and 

 lives very comfortably on the crumbs that fall from 

 our tables. Yet now, at one spot on this coast, I was 

 surprised into paying particular attention to the spar- 

 rows on account of a winter custom they had 

 acquired. 



One day on very rough land, half a mile from the 

 cliff, I came on a piece of ground of about two acres 

 in extent surrounded by a big stone hedge, without 

 gap or gate. It was the site of an old tin-mine 

 abandoned fifty or sixty years ago and walled round 

 to prevent the domestic animals from the neighbour- 

 ing farms falling into the pits. It was strange that so 

 much trouble had been taken for such an object, as in 

 all the other disused mining pits I had come upon in 

 the district the holes had simply been covered over 

 with wood and big stones, or they remained open and 



