204 AUGUST 



Britain two sorts almost monopolise the attention of 

 most of us. There are kittiwakes in special colonies, and 

 common gulls widely distributed, if few, and when we 

 sail into the Bay of Biscay or approach remoter cliffs the 

 lesser black-backed and more rarely the greater, may 

 dominate the scene ; but the herring gull, that monster 

 which in company gives tongue like a pack of foxhounds, 

 and the neat tern-like black-headed gull which invades 

 London, are those that prevail. They are the gulls that 

 follow the ploughs in Eastern and Southern England 

 follow them so closely that they are sprayed by the earth 

 (now and again buried by the earth) more thoroughly 

 than by any wave of the sea. The little London gulls 

 are indeed almost inland birds. They nest in tufts of 

 grass on inland moors, and devour perhaps more bread 

 and worms than fish of the sea. 



5- 



When thunder threatens, the whole creation seems to 

 travail in sympathy : trees, insects, birds, and mammals. 

 The green of the leaves glows as inordinately deep as the 

 piled clouds : you might almost take the sycamore for a 

 cumulus ; and could easily imagine that its still mass was 

 beginning to move upon you in one piece, as big with 

 threats as the storm above it. The stillness, almost uni 

 versal, belongs to a common certainty that some portent, 

 if not some catastrophe, is about to fall on the world. If 

 a leaf shakes or a bird sings it is an event. A pillar of 

 garden roses, grown suddenly brighter than ever, looks 

 strangely out of place, like finery at a funeral. Nature 

 waits with awe rather than fear for the weight of the air 

 to be lifted, for the still leaves to shiver in a sudden 

 breeze, for the tap of the big drops on the dome of trees, 



