60 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
water shoots swiftly over a steeper gradient, the un- 
dulations of its surface cross each other, plaiting a 
pattern like four strands interwoven. The resem- 
blance to the pattern of four rushes which the country 
children delight to plait together as they wander by 
the brooks is so close as almost to suggest the deriva- 
tion of the art of weaving rushes, flags, and willows 
by the hand. The sheep grazing at will in the 
coombe eat off the herbage too closely to permit of 
many flowers. Where the springs join and irrigate 
a broader strip there grows a little watercress, and 
some brooklime, said to be poisonous and occasionally 
mistaken for the cress; a stray cuckoo flower shows 
its pale lilac petals in spring, and a few bunches of 
rushes are scattered round. They do not reach any 
height or size; they seem dry and sapless, totally 
unlike the tall green succulent rush of the meadows 
far below. 
A water-wagtail comes now and then ; sometimes 
the yellow variety, whose colour in the spring is so 
bright as to cause the bird to resemble the yellow- 
hammer at the first glance. But besides these the 
spring-head is not much frequented by birds; per- 
haps the clear water attracts less visible insect life, 
and, the shore of the stream being hard and dry, 
there is no moisture where grubs and worms may 
work their way. Behind the fountain the steep green 
wall of the coombe rises almost perpendicularly—so 
steep as not to be climbed without exertion. At the 
