316 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
peared on the 13th, and the note of the cuckoo was. 
heard on the 15th. No great reliance should be put 
upon precise dates, because in the first place they vary 
annually, and in the next an observer can, in astro- 
nomical language, only sweep a limited area, and 
that but imperfectly ; so that it is very likely some 
ploughboy who thinks nothing of it—except to imme- 
diately imitate it—hears the cuckoo forty-eight hours 
before those who have been listening most carefully. 
So that these dates are not given because they are of’ 
any intrinsic value, but simply for illustration. On 
the 14th of April (the same spring) the fieldfares and 
redwings were passing over swiftly in small parties— 
or, rather, in a long flock scattered by the march— 
towards the North Sea and their summer home in. 
Norway. The winter birds, and the distinctly spring 
and summer birds, as it were, crossed each other and 
were visible together, their times of arrival and de- 
parture overlapping. 
As the sap rises in plants and trees, so a new life 
seems to flow through the veins of bird and animal. 
The flood-tide of life rises to its height, and after re- 
maining there some time, gradually ebbs. Early in 
August the leaves of the limes begin to fade, and a 
few shortly afterwards fall: the silver birch had spots 
of a pale lemon among its foliage this year on August 
13. The brake fern, soon after it has attained its full 
growth, begins to turn yellow in places. There is a 
silence in the hedges and copses, and an apparent 
