A Disused Quarry. 223 



too, in the gins, and a,ltogether would do bettex* to 

 sta}' in the hedgerows. 



The grass of this great pasture has a different ap- 

 pearance to that in the meadows which are mown 

 for hay. It is closer and less uniformly green, be- 

 cause of the innumerable dead fibres. There are 

 places which look almost white from the bennets 

 Avhich the cattle leave standing to die after the seeds 

 have fallen, and shrink as their sap dries up. Some- 

 what earher in the summer, bright yellow strips and 

 patches, like squares of praying-carpet thrown down 

 upon the sward, dotted the slopes : it was the bird's- 

 foot lotus growing so thickly as to overpower the 

 grass. Mushrooms nestle here and there : those that 

 grow in the open, far from hedge and tree, are small, 

 and the gills of a more delicate salmon color. Under 

 the elms 3'onder a much larger variet}' may be found, 

 which, though edible, are coarser. 



Where a part of the lake comes up to the field 

 is a long-disused quarry, whose precipices face the 

 water like a cliff. Thin grasses have grown over 

 the excavations below : the thistles and nettles have 

 covered the heaps of rubbish thrown aside. The 

 steep inaccessible walls of hardened sand are green 

 with minute vegetation. Along the edge above runs 

 a shallow red-brown band — it is the soil which 

 nourishes the roots of the grasses of the field : be- 

 neath it comes small detached stones in sand ; these 

 fall out, loosened by the weather, and roll down the 

 precipice. Then, still deeper, the sand hardens 

 almost into stone, and finally comes the stone itself; 

 but before the workmen could get out more than a 

 thin laj'er they reached the level of the water in the 



