212 Wild Life ina Southern County. 
apply force by degrees, pulling the main bough only 
so far forward as to enable the hand to reach an 
upper branch, seizing the upper branch, and by its 
aid reaching a still higher one, and gradually bending 
the central stem till it forms a bow. If done gradually 
and the bow not too acute, the tallest bush will 
spring up when released without the least injury. 
With a crook to seize the bush as high up as possible 
—where it bends more easily—not a twig need be 
broken, and nutting may be enjoyed without doing 
the least damage. 
Under a tall ash tree rising out of the hazel 
bushes, and near the great hawthorn on the edge or 
shore of the ditch, the grass grows rank and is of the 
deepest green. The dove that could be heard cooing 
from the orchard built her nest in the hawthorn, which, 
where it overhangs the grass like a canopy, is bare of 
boughs for six or seven feet up the gnarled stem. 
The cattle, who love to shelter under it from the heat 
of the sun, browsed on the young shoots, so that no 
branch could form; but on the side towards the 
ditch there are immense spiny thorns, long enough 
and strong enough to make a savage’s arrow-head or 
awl. The doves do not seem nearly so numerous as 
the wood-pigeons (doves too, in strict language) ; they 
are much smaller, rather duller in colour—that is, when 
flying past—andare rarely seen more thantwo together. 
When the summer thunder is booming yonder over 
the hills, and the thin edge of the dark cloud showers 
