162 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
the shady side of the house, where the musk-plant has 
spread abroad and covered the stone-pitching for many 
yards, except just a narrow path paved with broad 
flagstones. The musk finds root in every interstice 
of the pitching, but cannot push up through the solid 
flat flags; a fungus, however, has attempted even 
that, and has succeeded in forcing a great stone, 
weighing perhaps fifteen or twenty pounds, from its 
bed, so that instead of being level it forms an inclined 
plane. The carpet of musk yields a pleasant odour ; 
in one corner, too, the ‘ monkey-plant’ grows luxu- 
riantly, and the grass of the green or lawn is for ever 
trying to encroach upon the paving. In the centre 
of the green is a bed of gooseberries and a cherry 
tree ; and though the fruit is so close to the window, 
both thrush and blackbird make as free with it as if 
it was in the hedgerow. 
The thrush, when he wishes to approach the 
house, flies first to the cover of these gooseberries ; 
then, after reconnoitring a few minutes, comes out on 
the green and gradually works his way across it to the 
stone-pitching, and so along under the very window. 
The blackbird comes almost as often to the lawn, but 
it is in a different way. His manner is that of a bold 
marauder, conscious that he has no right, and aware 
that a shot from an ambuscade may lay him low, but 
defiantly risking the danger. He perches first on a 
bush, or on the garden wall, under the sheltering 
boughs of the lime trees, ata distance of some twenty 
