AUGUSTAN SOUNDS 209 



All this gorse and pine and bramble and briar do not 

 signify that Eden has suffered from the fall. If flowers 

 were few the most pleasing a bunch of foxgloves under 

 the Scotch firs the birds were many, and, indeed, are 

 still many. The wren sings all day as if stirred to melody 

 by the crackle of the seeds as nightingales in the war by 

 gunfire or in peace-time by thunder and &quot; summer 

 lightning/ Three dozen nests there were of linnet, 

 warbler, wagtail, wren, robin, finch, and the rest ; and 

 one willow wren, whose sweet plaintive song suggests a 

 shy remoteness, was brave enough to choose for her site 

 a small separate and very diaphanous bush against a wall 

 of the housel Behind it was continual music or other 

 noise, and in front of it a continual coming and going of 

 many inquisitive folk. 



Though the jenny wren sings, and, indeed, shouts, 

 the willow wren is more silent ; the larks, when they 

 speak, are almost as gruff as the corn-bunting, which 

 alone among all the birds now begins to nest and cele 

 brates its spring ; but as though to be in tune with the 

 month its song is of no better quality than the domestic 

 chatter of the other earlier birds. We think of August as 

 a time when the hum of insects fills the gap left by the 

 muting of the birds, we think of it as Meredith sang of 

 it in his supreme lyric, a time wholly given up to gnat 

 and midge and fly against which 



Cows flap a slow tail, knee-deep in the river, 



and there are as many sorts of hum as there are of song, 

 each with its distinctive note, to be distinguished by the 

 careful ear more easily than the whisper of different trees 

 by Hardy s woodlander. An hour after sunset if you 

 walk from the Garden of Whins toward the sea your ear 

 and for that matter your hair will be bombarded by 



O T.V.B. 



