XXxii DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLE OF MAN 
by gardens and shrubberies. Quickset hedges are not 
generally common, and the fields, frequently very small, 
are most often divided by high and broad earthen dykes, 
richly overgrown with gorse, which thus maps out the 
surface of the land with a chequer-work of yellow blossom, 
and up to a certain height covers also most of the wastes, 
‘gareys’-or ‘claddaghs’ as they are called. Indeed, Man 
is perhaps unrivalled in the world for the beauty and 
profusion of its gorse bloom, a beauty and profusion which 
it would be difficult to exaggerate. 
In the mountains the tracts are fenced by dry stone 
walls, which run for miles over moorland and _ steep 
declivity. Small patches of gorse and rushy wastes are 
abundant, and the course of the streams is often through 
a narrow belt of wet and bushy ground, where furze, 
bramble, willow, and sometimes alder prevail, with clumps 
of iris and tall growths of cenanthe and angelica, meadow- 
sweet and valerian. 
The common birds of cultivated land are the Rook, 
which is very abundant, the Blackbird, immensely more 
numerous than the Thrush, the Chaffinch (perhaps the 
commonest of all small birds), the Greenfinch, and, in 
more open ground, the Meadow Pipit, Yellow Hammer, 
and Skylark. The Magpie and Missel Thrush are also 
conspicuous species. Lapwings are rather scarce, except 
for the transitory appearance of flocks in winter, and 
the Wood Pigeon, save perhaps in one or two localities, 
is not abundant. 
Characteristic of the Isle of Man is the union of a 
moist atmosphere, cool though not cold, with high winds, 
mainly from the west. The cool summers and mild 
winters form a climate that knows little of frost or snow 
or exhausting heat. The sense of the near presence of 
the sea, not the muddy water of a gulf or estuary, but 
