m of winter lingers and the 'Shuck--a--sheck!' of the
fieldfare fleeing before the snow sounds overhead. On the slender
branches grow green ovals, from whose tips tiny scarlet plumes rise and
curl over.

It often happens that while the tall rods with speckled bark grow
vigorously the stole is hollow and decaying when the hardy fern
flourishes around it. Before the summer ricks are all carted the nuts
are full of sweet milky matter, and the shell begins to harden. A hazel
bough with a good crook is then sought by the men that are thinking of
the wheat harvest: they trim it for a 'vagging' stick, with which to
pull the straw towards them. True reaping is now never seen: 'vagging'
makes the short stubble that forces the partridges into the turnips.
Maple boughs, whose bark is so strongly ribbed, are also good for
'vagging' sticks.

Nut-tree is used for bonds to tie up faggots, and split for the
shepherds' hurdles. In winter sometimes a store of nuts and acorns may
be seen fallen in a stream down the side of a bank, scratched out from a
mouse's hole, as they say, by Reynard, who devours the little provident
creature without regard for its wisdom. So that man and wild animals
derive pleasure or use from the hazel in many ways. When the nuts are
ripe the carters' lads do not care to ride sideways on the broad backs
of the horses as they jog homewards along the lane, but are ever in the
hedges.

There were plenty in the double-mounds to which we had access; but the
shepherd, who had learned his craft on the Downs, said that the nuts
grew there in such immense quantities as determined us to see them.
Sitting on the felled ash under the shade of the hawthorn hedge, where
the butcher-birds every year used to stick the humble-bees on the
thorns, he described the route--a mere waggon track--and the situation
of the largest copses.

The waggon track we found crossed the elevated plains close under and
between the Downs, following at the foot, as it seemed, for an endless
distance the curve of a range. The slope bounded the track on one side:
on the other it was enclosed by a low bank covered with dead thorn
thickly entangled, which enclosed the cornfields. The space between the
hedge and the hill was as far as we could throw one of the bleached
flints lying on the sward. It was dotted with hawthorn trees and furze,
and full of dry brown grass. A few scattered firs, the remnants of
extinct plantations, grew on the slope, and gre