nd fro, almost instantly another follows, and then it is
indeed a dance before they alight. The wheeling, maze-tracing,
devious windings continue till the eye wearies and rests with
pleasure on a passing butterfly. These birds have nests in the
meadows adjoining; they meet here as a common feeding-ground.
Presently they will disperse, each returning to his mate at the
nest. Half an hour afterwards they will meet once more, either here
or on the wing.

In this manner they spend their time from dawn, through the
flower-growing day, till dusk. When the sun arises over the hill
into the sky, already blue, the plovers have been up a long while.
All the busy morning they go to and fro: the busy morning when the
wood-pigeons cannot rest in the copses on the combe side, but
continually fly in and out; when the blackbirds whistle in the oaks;
when the bluebells gleam with purplish lustre. At noontide in the
dry heat it is pleasant to listen to the sound of water moving among
the thousand thousand grass-blades of the mead. The flower-growing
day lengthens out beyond the sunset, and till the hedges are dim the
lapwings do not cease.

Leaving now the shade of the oak, I follow the path into the meadow
on the right, stepping by the way over a streamlet which diffuses
its rapid current broadcast over the sward till it collects again
and pours into the brook. This next meadow is somewhat more raised,
and not watered; the grass is high, and full of buttercups. Before I
have gone twenty yards a lapwing rises out in the field, rushes
towards me through the air, and circles round my head, making as if
to dash at me, and uttering shrill cries. Immediately another comes
from the mead behind the oak; then a third from over the hedge, and
all those that have been feeding by the bank, till I am encircled
with them. They wheel round, dive, rise aslant, cry, and wheel
again, always close over me, till I have walked some distance, when
one by one they fall off, and, still uttering threats, retire. There
is a nest in this meadow, and, although it is, no doubt, a long way
from the path, my presence even in the field, large as it is, is
resented. The couple who imagine themselves threatened are quickly
joined by their friends, and there is no rest till I have left their
treasures far behind.

II.--THE GREEN CORN

Pure colour almost always gives the idea of fire, or, rather, it is
perhaps as if a light shone through as well as the colour itse