90 WAYFARING NOTIONS 



clover, buttercups and the other yellow flower 

 related to the sweet sultan, the last of the may, 

 and some of the furze, also elder flowers and 

 buckthorns, the daisies and the dog violets, the 

 scented violets' leaves and the cowslips, the 

 mosses and the grasses themselves making hay 

 scent under your footfall, the kidney vetch, the 

 milk worts and the stitchwort, the wild raspberry 

 canes and the blackberry leaves — strongly aro- 

 matic both — and the hundred — hundred is it, or 

 thousand ? — other inhabitants of Downland. 

 Our blend and want of music in the soul, which 

 induces acting up to the deficit with a tendency 

 to stratagems and spoils as well, could not go 

 together. 



I have often wondered why someone does not 

 start a sanatorium on the Downs. What price 

 that, with poor run-down mortals resting their 

 eyes doing nothing but watching the rooks 

 manoeuvring and the jackdaws trying to go one 

 better, the rabbits slyly playing, and the thrushes 

 seeking a living far from cover, the plovers com- 

 plaining, as is their wont, a stray seagull seeking 

 what it may devour, the chats a-chatting, and the 

 larks never at a loss for a voluntary till a dis- 

 cordant element presents itself in the person of a 

 hawk, the doves — not wood pigeons, doves — busy 

 in the hollows, where the mixed clover hay crops 

 are so heavy this year, and the wagtails, ever 

 fidgeting, the wheat-ears, who may not be caught 

 as they used, and are now in consequence scarcer 

 than before protection came, and the waves — not 

 waves, but seas of clouds, shadows running over 

 the shoulders of the hills and into the bosoms of 

 the dells. 



Who was it? Old '* Ingoldsby," was it not. 



