tell you is as the dodge is this: you watch everybody, and
be always in the fields, and always work one parish till you knows every
hare in un, and always work by yourself and don't have no mates.'

There were several other curious characters whom we frequently saw at
work. The mouchers were about all the year round, and seemed to live in,
or by the hedges, as much as the mice. These men probably see more than
the most careful observer, without giving it a thought.

In January the ice that freezes in the ditches appears of a dark colour,
because it lies without intervening water on the dead brown leaves.
Their tint shows through the translucent crystal, but near the edge of
the ice three white lines or bands run round. If by any chance the ice
gets broken or upturned, these white bands are seen to be caused by
flanges projecting from the under surface, almost like stands. They are
sometimes connected in such a way that the parallel flanges appear like
the letter 'h' with the two down-strokes much prolonged. In the morning
the chalky rubble brought from the pits upon the Downs and used for
mending gateways leading into the fields glistens brightly. Upon the
surface of each piece of rubble there adheres a thin coating of ice: if
this be lightly struck it falls off, and with it a flake of the chalk.
As it melts, too, the chalk splits and crumbles; and thus in an ordinary
gateway the same process may be seen that disintegrates the most
majestic cliff.

The stubbles--those that still remain--are full of linnets, upon which
the mouching fowler preys in the late autumn. And when at the end of
January the occasional sunbeams give some faint hope of spring, he
wanders through the lanes carrying a decoy bird in a darkened cage, and
a few boughs of privet studded with black berries and bound round with
rushes for the convenience of handling.

The female yellow-hammers, whose hues are not so brilliant as those of
the male birds, seem as winter approaches to flock together, and roam
the hedges and stubble fields in bevies. Where loads of corn have passed
through gates the bushes often catch some straws, and the tops of the
gateposts, being decayed and ragged, hold others. These are neglected
while the seeds among the stubble, the charlock, and the autumn
dandelion are plentiful and while the ears left by the gleaners may
still be found. But in the shadowless winter days, hard and cold, each
scattered straw is sought for.

A fe