ll not move anything in an old blackthorn
thicket. A man can scarcely push through it: nothing but a dog can
manage to get about. On the meadow side there was no ditch, only a
narrow fringe of tall pointed grass and rushes, with one or two small
furze bushes projecting out upon the sward. Behind such bushes, on the
slope of the mound, is rather a favourite place for a rabbit to sit out,
or a hare to have a form.

The brook was shallow towards the hedge, and bordered with flags, among
which rose up one tall bunch of beautiful reeds. Some little way up the
brook a pond opened from it. At the entrance the bar of mud had hardly
an inch of water; within there was a clear small space, and the rest all
weeds, with moorhens' tracks. The farther side of the pond was covered
with bramble bushes. It is a good plan to send the dogs into bushes
growing on the banks of ponds; for though rabbits dislike water itself
they are fond of sitting out in such cover near it. A low railing
enclosed the side towards me: the posts had slipped by the giving way of
the soil, and hung over the still pool.

One of the rails--of willow--was eaten out into hollow cavities by the
wasps, which came to it generation after generation for the materials of
their nests. The particles they detach are formed into a kind of paste
or paper: in time they will quite honeycomb a pole. The third side of
the pond shelved to the 'leaze,' that the cattle might drink. From it a
narrow track went across the broad field up the rising ground to the
distant gateway leading to the meadows, where they grazed on the
aftermath. Marching day by day, one after the other in single file, to
the drinking-place, the hoofs of the herd had cut a clean path in the
turf, two or three inches deep and trodden hard. The reddish soil thus
exposed marked the winding line athwart the field, through the tussocky
bunches.

By the pond stood a low three-sided merestone or landmark, the initials
on which were hidden under moss. Up in the tree, near the gun, there was
a dead branch that had decayed in the curious manner that seems peculiar
to oak. Where it joined the trunk the bark still remained, though
covered with lichen, and for a foot or so out; then there was a long
space where the bark and much of the wood had mouldered away; finally,
near the end the bough retained its original size and the bark adhered.
At the junction with the trunk and at the extremity its diameter was
perhaps three i