Sharp-edged Grasses. 227 
Some of the grasses growing by the hedge are not 
to be handled carelessly, the edge of the long blade 
cutting like a lancet : the awn-like seeds of others, if 
they should chance to get into the mouth, as happens 
occasionally to the haymakers, work down towards 
the throat, the attempt to get rid of them causing a 
creeping motion the opposite way. This is owing to 
the awns all slanting in one direction. 
On the sultry afternoons of the latter part of the 
summer the hedge is all but silent. Waiting in the 
gateway there is no sound for half an hour at a time, 
no call or merry song in the branches, nothing but 
the buzz of flies. The birds are quiet, or nearly so: 
they slip about so noiselessly that it is difficult to 
observe them, so that many perhaps migrate before 
it is suspected, and others stay on when thought to be 
gone. In the grass the grasshoppers make their 
hiss, and towards evening the yellowhammers utter a 
few notes; but while the corn is being reaped the 
meadows are all but still. 
