126 FIELD AND HEDGEROW 
these oaks, as if an impatient hand had cast them into 
the sky; then down they fell again, with a ceaseless 
whistling and clucking; up they went and down they 
came, lost in the deep green foliage as if they had 
dropped in the sea. The long level of the wheat-field 
plain stretched out from my feet towards the far-away 
Downs, so level that the first hedge shut off the fields 
beyond ; and every now and then over these hedges there 
rose up the white forms of sea-gulls drifting to and fro 
among the elms. White sea-gulls—birds of divination, 
you might say—a good symbol of the times, for now we 
plougn the ocean. The barren sea! Inthe Greek poets 
you may find constant reference to it as that which could 
not be reaped or sowed. Ulysses, to betoken his mad- 
ness, took his plough down to the shore and drew 
furrows in the sand—the sea that even Demeter, great 
goddess, could not sow nor bring to any fruition. Yet 
now the ocean is our wheat-field and ships are our barns. . 
The sea-gull should be painted on the village tavern ° 
sign instead of the golden wheatsheaf. 
There could be no more flat and uninteresting sur- 
face than this field, a damp wet brown, water slowly 
draining out of the furrows, not a bird that I can see. 
No hare certainly, or partridge, or even a rabbit—nothing 
to sit or crouch—on that cold surface, tame and level as 
the brown cover of a book. They like something more 
human and comfortable ; just as we creep into nooks and 
corners of rooms and into cosy arm-chairs, so they like 
tufts or some growth of shelter, or mounds that are dry, 
between hedges where there is a bite for them. I can 
trace nothing on this surface, so heavily washed by late 
rain. Let now the harriers come, and instantly the 
hounds’ second sense of smell picks up the invisible sign 
of the hare that has crosscd it in the night or carly dawn, 
