I 2 Sununer Studies of Birds and Books chap. 



comes them about the equinox ; of course they have 

 been getting ready for weeks, but some at least of 

 them stick to their habits of the winter, for there are 

 flights of them hurrying westward to their roosting- 

 place beyond the hills, where the sun will soon be 

 setting. Birds that can still do this have hardly yet 

 begun to nest. 



It is really in the grass and the plough-land that 

 I see most change since my last visit. This meadow 

 slopes before me to the west, and the sun, now close 

 on the hill-top, fills all the grass with light, making 

 the old brown tufts stand out distinctly amid the 

 fresh growth of to-day. Those old tufts remind me 

 of snow, and of Keats's hare that " limped trembling 

 through the frozen grass " ; these warm, green 

 patches, of the boundless growth of buttercups that 

 is to come, of exhausted cows on a hot June day, of 

 all that wealth of summer rain that no farmer seems 

 to be able to foretell and anticipate. Thought might 

 wander on at will, but my eye catches a new token 

 of business (in the real sense of that sorrily-handled 

 word) in the abundant mole- heaps that crowd the 

 slope a little farther on. 



These indefatigable little animals have been at 

 work since January, when their favourite huntin"- 

 grounds suddenly showed an eruption of little brown 

 hillocks ; and now you see here and there amon" 

 these a small stick thrust into the ground, which 



