z6o NOVEMBER 



has enhanced the Downs as, to my thinking, do the ricks 

 and stacks and farm buildings and even the chalk roads. 

 Where these woods are nursed in else barren hollows 

 they provide warm harbourage to all manner of animals, 

 both four-legged and two-legged ; but it needs a real 

 lover of what is English in England to plant them right. 

 After all, the comely hedgerows, now both crimson and 

 orange with berries of quick and spindle (a bush much at 

 home on the chalk), were set there by man, not so very 

 long ago. The hedges enrich the approaches, as the 

 homesteads the hollows and the ploughs both the upper 

 and lower slopes. A snug plantation, even of larch and 

 Douglas fir, has its place along with them. The yellow 

 and the green made a friendly association as you came 

 upon them surprisingly in the mist, though their offence 

 would be rank if they dared to break the sweep of the 

 ridge s line. It is no offence to the wheatear, nesting in 

 the rabbit scoops, or the finch in the bushes, that tit and 

 wryneck find a home in a neighbour hollow. 



3- 



The field was golden in August with a crop of wheat 

 almost perfect in ear, though not otherwise heavy, and 

 only disappointing to the farmer and villager because 

 the last patch to be reaped was empty of rabbits, which 

 fly much sooner from the noisy tractor than the horse- 

 drawn reaper. The Bank holiday meet of foxhounds 

 before the hospitable doors of the country house is not 

 a more popular event than the spectacle of the sauve qui 

 peut from the last rectangle of standing corn. There was 

 no long drawn out sweetness about the sunny harvest. 

 Things move quickly in these days. The tied sheafs 

 were carried on the day they were expelled from the 



