Wood Pigeons and Wild Flowers 39 



bare, without the overhanging oak of the meadows, whose 

 sweeping boughs snatch and retain wisps of the hay from 

 the top of a waggon-load as it passes under. The gate 

 itself is dilapidated — perhaps only a rail, or a couple of 

 ' flakes ' fastened together with tar-cord : there are no 

 cattle here to require strong fences. 



In the young beans yonder the wood-pigeons are busy 

 — too busy for the farmer ; they have a habit, as they rise 

 and hover about their feeding-places, of suddenly shooting 

 up into the air, and as suddenly sinking again to the level 

 of their course, describing a line roughly resembling the 

 outline of a tent if drawn on paper, a cone whose sides 

 droop inward somewhat. They do this too, over the ash 

 woods where they breed, or the fir trees ; it is not done 

 when they are travelling straight ahead on a journey. 



The odour of the bean-flower lingering on the air in 

 the early summer is delicious ; in autumn when cut the 

 stalk and pods are nearly black, so that the shocks on the 

 side of the hills show at a great distance. The sward, 

 where the slope of the down becomes almost level beside 

 the hedge, is short and sweet and thickly strewn with tiny 

 flowers, to which and to the clover the bees come, settling, 

 as it were, on the ground, so that as you walk you nearly 

 step on them, and they rise from under the foot with a 

 shrill, angry buzz. 



On the other side the plough has left a narrow strip of 

 green running along the hedge : the horses, requiring some 

 space in which to turn at the end of each furrow, could not 

 draw the share any nearer, and on this narrow strip the 

 weeds and wild flowers flourish. The light-sulphur- 

 coloured charlock is scattered everywhere — out among the 

 corn, too, for no cleaning seems capable of eradicating this 

 plant ; the seeds will linger in the earth and retain their 



