154 Wild Life in a SoutJiem County 



CHAPTER X. 



THE WOOD-PILE — LIZARDS — SHEDS AND RICKYARD — THE WITCHES* 

 BRIAR — INSECTS — PLANTS, FLOWERS, AND FRUIT. 



The farmhouse at Wick has the gardens and orchard 

 already mentioned upon one side, and on the other are the 

 carthouses, sheds, and rickyard. Between these latter and 

 the dwelling runs a broad roadway for the waggons to 

 enter and leave the fields, and on its border stands a great 

 wood-pile. The faggots cut in the winter from the hedges 

 are here stacked up as high as the roof of a cottage, and 

 near by lies a heap of ponderous logs waiting to be split 

 for firewood. From exposure to the weather the bark of 

 the faggot-sticks has turned black and is rapidly decaying, 

 and under it innumerable insects have made their homes. 



For these, probably, the wrens visit the wood-pile con- 

 tinually ; if in passing any one strikes the faggots with a 

 stick, a wren will generally fly out on the opposite side. 

 They creep like mice in between the faggots — there are 

 numerous interstices — and thus sometimes pass right 

 through a corner of the stack. Sometimes a pole which has 

 been lying by for a length of time is found to be curiously 

 chased, as it were, all over the surface under the loose 

 bark by creeping things. They eat channels interweaving 

 and winding in and out in an intricate pattern, occasion- 

 ally a little resembling the Moorish style of ornamentation 

 seen on the walls of the Alhambra. I have found poles so 



