WALKS IN THE WHEAT-FIELDS. 137 
another cloud descends beyond it, a very mist and 
vapour as it were of wings. It makes one wonder to 
think where all the nests could have been; there could 
hardly have been enough eaves and barns for all these 
to have been bred in. Every one of the multitude has 
a keen pair of eyes and a hungry beak, and every single 
individual finds something to eat in the stubble. Some- 
thing that was not provided for them, crumbs that have 
escaped from this broad table, and there they are every 
day for weeks together, still finding food. If you will 
consider the incredible number of little mouths, and the 
busy rate at which they ply them hour by hour, you 
may imagine what an immense number of grains of 
wheat must have escaped man’s hand, for you must 
remember that every time they peck they take a whole 
grain. Down, too, come the grey-blue wood-pigeons and 
the wild turtle-doves. The singing linnets come in 
parties, the happy greenfinches, the streaked yellow- 
hammers, as if any one had delicately painted them in 
separate streaks, and not with a wash of colour, the 
brown buntings, chaffinches—out they come from the 
hazel copses, where the nuts are dropping, and the hedge 
berries turning red, and every one finds something to his 
liking. There are the seeds of the charlock and the 
thistle, and a hundred other little seeds, insects, and 
minute atom-like foods it needs a bird’s eye to know. 
They are never still, they sweep up into the hedges and 
line the -boughs, calling and talking, and away again to 
another rood of stubble without any order or plan of 
search, just sowing themselves about like wind-blown 
seeds, Up and down the day through with a zest never 
failing. It is beautiful to listen to them and watch them, 
if any one will.stay under an oak by the nut-tree 
boughs, where the dragon-{lies shoot to and fro in the 
