odden, and has lost
its original green--the prickles, too, have decayed and disappeared; yet
at a touch it falls apart, and discloses two chestnuts, still of a rich,
deep polished brown.

On the very bank of the brook there grows a beech whose bare boughs
droop over, almost dipping in the water, where it comes with a swift
rush from the narrow arches of a small bridge whose bricks are green
with moss. The current is still slightly turbid, for the floods have not
long subsided, and the soaked meadows and ploughed fields send their
rills to swell the brook and stain it with sand and earth. On the
surface float down twigs and small branches forced from the trees by the
gales: sometimes an entangled mass of aquatic weeds--long, slender green
filaments twisted and matted together--comes more slowly because heavy
and deep in the water.

A little bird comes flitting silently from the willows and perches on
the drooping beech branch. It is a delicate little creature, the breast
of a faint and dull yellowy green, the wings the lightest brown, and
there is a pencilled streak over the eye. The beak is so slender it
scarce seems capable of the work it should do, the legs and feet so tiny
that they are barely visible. Hardly has he perched than the keen eyes
detect a small black speck that has just issued from the arch, floating
fast on the surface of the stream and borne round and round in a tiny
whirlpool.

He darts from the branch, hovers just above the water, and in a second
has seized the black speck and returned to the branch. A moment or two
passes, and again he darts and takes something--this time
invisible--from the water. A third time he hovers, and on this occasion
just brushes the surface. Then, suddenly finding that these movements
are watched, he flits--all too soon--up high into the beech and away
into the narrow copse. The general tint and shape of the bird are those
of the willow wren, but it is difficult to identify the species in so
brief a glance and without hearing its note.

The path now trends somewhat away from the stream and skirts a ploughed
field, where the hedges are cropped close and the elms stripped of the
lesser boughs about the trunks, that the sparrows may not find shelter.
But all the same there are birds here too--one in the thick low hedge,
two or three farther on, another in the ditch perching on the dead white
stems of last year's plants that can hardly support an ounce weight, and
all cal