48 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
breed, or the fir trees; it is not done when they are 
travelling straight ahead on a journey. 
The odour of the bean-flower lingering on the air 
in the early summer is delicious; in autumn when 
cut the stalk and pods are nearly black, so that the 
shocks on the side of the hills show at a great distance. 
The sward, where the slope of the down becomes 
almost level beside the hedge, is short and sweet 
and thickly strewn with tiny flowers, to which and 
to the clover the bees come, settling, as it were, on 
the ground, so that as you walk you nearly step on 
them, and they rise from under the foot with a shrill, 
angry buzz. 
On the other side the plough has left a narrow 
strip of green running along the hedge: the horses, 
requiring some space in which to turn at the end of 
each furrow, could not draw the share any nearer, and 
on this narrow strip the weeds and wild flowers 
flourish. The light-sulphur-coloured charlock is scat- 
tered everywhere—out among the corn, too, for no 
cleaning seems capable of eradicating this plant ; the 
seeds will linger in the earth and retain their germin- 
ating power for a length of time, till the plough brings 
them near enough to the surface, when they are sure 
to shoot up unless the pigeons find them. Here also 
may be found the wild garlic, which sometimes gets 
among the wheat and lends an onion-like flavour to 
the bread. It grows, too, on the edge of the low 
chalky banks overhanging the narrow waggon track, 
