200. FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
APRIL GOSSIP. 
THE old woman tried to let the cuckoo out of the basket 
at Heathfield fair as usual on the 14th; but there seems 
to have been a hitch with the lid, for he was not heard 
immediately about the country. Just before that two 
little boys were getting over a gate from a hop-garden, 
with handfuls of Lent lilies—a beautiful colour under 
the dark sky. They grow wild round the margin of the 
hop-garden, showing against the bare dark loam; gloomy 
cloud over and gloomy earth under. ‘Sell mea bunch?’ 
‘No, no, can’t do that ; we wants these yer for granmer,’ 
‘Well, get me a bunch presently, and I will give you 
twopence for it.’ ‘I dunno. We sends the bunches we 
finds up to Aunt Polly in Lunnon, and they sends us 
back sixpence for every bunch.’ So the wild flowers 
go to Lunnon from all parts of the country, bushels and 
bushels of them. Nearly two hundred miles away in 
Somerset a friend writes that he has been obliged to put 
up notice-boards to stay the people from tearing up his 
violets and primroses, not only gathering them but 
making the flowery banks waste; and_notice-boards 
have proved no safeguard. The worst is that the roots 
are taken, so that years will be required to repair the 
loss. Birds are uncertain husbandmen, and sow seeds 
as fancy leads their wings. Do the violets get sown by 
ants? Sir John Lubbock says they carry violet seeds 
into their nests, 
