eld up to the light, seem to have numerous eyelets, as if
pricked but not quite through--windows in the leaf. In the grass the
short selfheal shows; and, leaning over the gate, on the edge of the
wheat you may see the curious prickly seed-vessels of the corn
buttercup--the 'hedgehog'--whose spines, however, will not scratch the
softest skin.

Resting on the rail under the hawthorn for a minute or two in early
spring, when it was too chilly to stay long, I watched a flock of
rooks and jackdaws soaring in the sky. Round and round and ever
upwards they circled, the jackdaws of course betraying their presence
by their call; up towards the blue, as if in the joy of their hearts,
they held a festival, happy in the genial weather and the approach of
the nesting-time. This soaring and wheeling is evidently done for
recreation, like a dance. Presently the flock seems to tumble and
fall, and there comes the rushing sound of the air swiftly parted by
their out-spread wings as they dive a hundred feet in a second. The
noise is audible a quarter of a mile off. This, too, is play; for,
catching themselves and regaining their balance just above the elms,
they resume their steady flight onwards to distant feeding-grounds.
Later in the season, sitting there in the warm evenings, I could hear
the pheasants utter their peculiar roost-cry, and the noise of their
wings as they flew up in the wood: the vibration is so loud that it
might almost be described as thumping.

By-and-by the cuckoo began to lose his voice; he gurgled and gasped,
and cried 'cuck--kuk--kwai--kash,' and could not utter the soft,
melodious 'oo.' The latest date on which I ever heard the cuckoo here,
to be certain, was the day before St. Swithin, July 14, 1879. The
nightingales, too, lose their sweet notes, but not their voices; they
remain in the hedges long after their song has ceased. Passing by the
hawthorn bushes up to the end of July, you may hear a bird within that
seems to threaten you with a loud 'sweet-kurr,' and, looking in, you
will find it to be a nightingale. The spelling exactly represents the
sound, 'r' being twirled. 'Sweet-kurr-kurr' comes from the interior of
the bushes with an angry emphasis.

Along the lower part of these meadows there was a brook, and the
brook-sparrows were chattering ceaselessly as I walked among the
willow-stoles by it one morning towards the end of June. On the left
hand the deep stream flowed silently round its gentle curves