ii6 MY DEVON YEAR 



green thing-s — watercress and brooklime and marsh- 

 wort — are already awake, and the bank above them 

 is draped with ferns and ivy, and the lesser peri- 

 winkles, whose blue blossoms, among the first of 

 spring flowers, make fine colour against their own 

 brigrht leaves. 



The birds drink, and thoughts of matrimony are 

 upon the air, for the day is warm, and the nook is 

 sheltered, and hope of Spring high in the hearts of 

 all creatures. Brown field-mice rustle along their ivy- 

 hidden ways invisible ; the lesser woodpecker taps in 

 an elm above my head ; and where Scotch firs ascend, 

 there is great business of eating, for little shreds of 

 cone flutter down in a shower. Each silvery flake 

 once was wing of a seed, but the seeds are under 

 a squirrel's waistcoat now. Systematically he works 

 from base to crown of the cone, and leaves it gnawed 

 as neatly round as though cut with a lathe. I have 

 caught the cone so treated straight from his paw, as 

 he threw it down and bustled to some bending twig 

 for another. 



With March the seedlings begin to come into 

 their own, and we recognise them as they follow 

 the unchanging way. The hairy cardamine has 

 crowned his foliage with small white flowers ; the 

 speedwells and galiums declare themselves ; the 

 wild onions splash the hedge with fine foliage, and 

 about the old plants countless little green lancets 

 spring from last year's seed. The green hellebore 

 is a rare treasure, and her verdant bells down-drooping 



