226 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
across the lawn in front of Holnicote House. Humble- 
bees hummed in the grass and visited the flowers of the 
holly bushes. Thrushes sang, and chaffinches, and, 
sweetest of all, if simplest in notes, the greenfinches talkcd 
and courted in the trees. Two cuckoos called in differ- 
ent directions, wood-pigeons raised their voices in Sel- 
worthy Wood, and rooks went over cawing in their deli- 
berate way. In the level meadow from among the tall 
grasses and white-flowering wild parsley a landrail called 
‘crake, crake,’ ceaselessly. There was asense of rest and 
quiet, and with it a joyousness of bird-life, such as should 
be about an English homestead. 
