246 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
whole of the field at once. In the hollows the ridges 
conceal its real extent ; on the ridges a corresponding 
rise yonder suggests another valley. The two rows 
of tall elms—some hundreds of yards apart—the 
scattered hawthorn bushes and solitary trees, groups 
of cattle in the shade, and sheep grazing by the far- 
away hedge, give the aspect of a wilder park, the more 
pleasant because of its wildness. 
Near about the centre, where the land is most 
level, an unexpected slope goes down into a cuplike 
depression, This green crater may perhaps have been 
formed by digging for sand—so long ago that the 
turf has since grown over smoothly. Standing at the 
bottom the sides conceal all but the sky over head. 
Some few dead leaves of last year, not yet decayed 
though bleached and brittle, lie here at rest from the 
winds that swept them over the plain. Silky balls 
of thistledown come irresolutely rolling over the edge, 
now this way now that: some rise and float across, 
some follow the surface and cling awhile to the ben- 
nets in the hollow. Pale blue harebells, drooping 
from their slender stems here and there, meditate with 
bowed heads, as if full of tender recollections. 
Now, on hands and knees (theturf is dry and soft), 
creep up one side of the bowl-like hollow, where the 
thistles make a parapet on the edge, and from behind 
it look out upon the ground all broken up into low 
humps, some covered with nettles, others plainly heaps 
of sand. It is the site of an immense rabbit-burrow, 
