either end, like a tube, he
floated it--the stalk is very light--on the bowl. Looking through this
tube he could get his level almost as accurately as with an engineer's
instrument, though of course it was more cumbrous to use.

There was a corner here that had not been mown for a long time, and in
the autumn the wild carrots took possession of it, almost to the
exclusion of grass and other plants. The flower of the wild carrot
gathers together as the seeds mature, and forms a framework cup at the
top of the stalk, like a bird's-nest. These 'bird's-nests,' brown and
weather-beaten, endured far into the winter. The brook-sparrows still
sang as I passed by again in the evening; they seem the most unwearied
of birds, for you may hear them all day, all the evening, and at one
o'clock next morning; indeed, at intervals, all night. By night the
note is, or appears to be, less sparrow-like, or perhaps the silence
of night improves it to the ear. I stayed that evening in a corner of
a wheatfield not yet yellow, and watched the shadows of the trees grow
longer and broader as the sun declined.

As the breeze rushed over the corn there was a play of various shades
of green, the stalks as they bent this and that way taking different
hues. But under the hedge it was still; the wind could not come
through, though it moved the boughs above. A mass of cloud like flocks
of wool, mottled and with small spaces of blue between, drifted slowly
eastwards, and its last edge formed an arch over the western horizon,
under which the sun shone. The yellow vetchling had climbed up from
the ditch and opened its flower, and there were young nuts on the
hazel bough. Far away in a copse a wood-pigeon called; nearer the
blackbirds were whistling; a willow wren uttered his note high in the
elm, and a distant yellowhammer sang to the sinking sun.

The brook had once been much wider, and in flood times rendered the
Overboro' road almost impassable; for before a bridge was built it
spread widely and crossed the highway--a rushing, though shallow,
torrent fifty yards broad. The stumps of the willows that had grown by
it could still be found in places, and now and then an ancient
'bullpoll' was washed up. This grass is so tough that the tufts or
cushions it forms will last in water for fifty years, even when rooted
up--decayed of course and black, but still distinguishable. In those
times just previous to the construction of railways, when the lord of
th