210 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
CHAPTER XI. 
THE HOME-FIELD—HAZEL CORNER—THE DIVINING-ROD— 
RABBITS’ HOLES—THE CORNCRAKE—VENTRILOQUISM OF 
BIRDS—HEDGE-FRUIT. 
A WICKET-GATE affords a private entrance from the 
orchard into the home-field, opening on the meadow 
close to the great hedge, the favourite highway of the 
birds. Tracing this hedge away from the homestead, 
in somewhat more-than two hundred yards it is 
joined by another hedge crossing the top of the field, 
thus forming a sheltered nook or angle, which has been 
alluded to as the haunt of squirrels. Here the high- 
way hedge is almost all of hazel, though one large 
hawthorn tree stands on the ‘shore’ of the ditch. 
Hazel grows tall, straight, and is not so bushy as 
some underwood ; the lesser boughs do not interlace 
or make convenient platforms on which to build nests, 
and birds do not use it much. 
The ancient divination by the hazel wand, or, 
rather, the method of searching for subterranean 
springs, is not yet forgotten ; some of the old folk 
believe in it still. I have seen it tried myself, half in 
