5* JANUARY 



always just coming to a forest. Would the bullfinches 

 be shorn and the little hedges grubbed, and barbed 

 wire, that symbol of cantankerous parsimony, bar the 

 bare fields ? 



England, it seems, can triumph over any change. On 

 every other grass-field the plover were grouped as con 

 spicuously as rooks in a rookery and the fieldfare chat 

 tered over their meals of hip and haw. No change in 

 the common life of the country could be felt or perceived. 

 On the grass-fields, green because well grazed, fed satis 

 factory numbers of dun cows and blue cows, that joint 

 product of Friesland and Durham. They had not been 

 routed by winter as in &quot;less happier lands.&quot; The 

 &quot; strawbuilt hut, warm with the breath of kine &quot; has a 

 romantic ring ; but the cows, as in Switzerland and on 

 many small farms in most countries, emerge almost blind 

 when spring comes, and have enjoyed a sort of warmth at 

 the cost of everything else. This was better and a better 

 sight. Two rough yet well-dressed labourers toiled down 

 the lane under the weight of great trusses of hay to be 

 fed to the stock in the open field ; and others had been 

 busy at other times in scattering roots over the grass. 



One grass hillside, to which the scattered roots of 

 huge girth gave the likeness of a pebbled beach, was 

 populous with long-woolled ewes ; and there seemed to 

 be a rough stackyard in one corner. It might hold a 

 flock of finches, birds best worth observing in hard 

 winter weather when the northern visitors have sought 

 refuge in the South. On nearer view that expectation 

 fled. The straw proved to be no yard, but a lambing 

 pen of more than usually luxurious proportions. The 

 straw walls were built on tall hurdles and so heavily 

 packed that not a breath of winter could penetrate. The 

 oblong contained a snuggery divided off, and though 



