The Nutting. 103 



though sometimes it is held suspect as a propagator 

 of mildew ; and the elderberry, from which good wine 

 is made ; and the sloe, from which is drawn more deli- 

 cious wine still. After a long dusty journey, even those 

 who are in some things fastidious might enjoy a glass 

 of well-kept sloe wine, such as is to be found in many 

 a peasant's cottage. And then we must not forget the 

 wild strawberry nestling among the grass, and peeping 

 forth with its delicious miniature berries. At the proper 

 season old and young turn out in force for the work of 

 picking, and no more pleasant pictures of rustic life are 

 to be seen than then. Even the babies toddle about, 

 and, with lips purple from the juice of stray berries 

 handed to them, laugh and chuckle and dance and are 

 glad, as it befits childhood to be. The farmers are in 

 nothing more liberal than in their willingness to let 

 those who are known to them thus enjoy the harvest 

 of the hedgerow; but, naturally, they have a strong 

 objection to tramps and strangers, who are apt to 

 make such liberty an occasion to pick up unconsidered 

 trifles, and, if not so bad as that, to leave gates open 

 behind them and make inconvenient gaps in fences, 

 which sometimes leads to awkward results in cattle or 

 horses going astray. 



And then the nutting; for nutting cannot well be 

 dissociated from the hedgerows, though the nut trees 

 scatter themselves about, like capricious beauties, 

 through strips of plantation and coppice ; but they, 

 too, Jove the hedgerow and flourish there, and you 

 cannot go a-nutting and fail to linger by the hedge- 

 rows. -Wordsworth knew that too, and has charac- 

 teristically noted it. 



No student of natural history can afford to neglect 

 the hedgerow. He will never become familiar with 



