out it in the spring, and even in the May sunshine might
be seen rambling over the slopes. As it grew higher it hid the leverets
and the partridge chicks. Toll has been taken by rook, and sparrow, and
pigeon. Enemies, too, have assailed it; the daring couch invaded it, the
bindweed climbed up the stalk, the storm rushed along and beat it down.
Yet it triumphed, and to-day the full sheaves lean against each other.

THE CROWS

On one side of the road immediately after quitting the suburb there is a
small cover of furze. The spines are now somewhat browned by the summer
heats, and the fern which grows about every bush trembles on the balance
of colour between green and yellow. Soon, too, the tall wiry grass will
take a warm brown tint, which gradually pales as the autumn passes into
winter, and finally bleaches to greyish white.

Looking into the furze from the footpath, there are purple traces here
and there at the edge of the fern where the heath-bells hang. On a furze
branch, which projects above the rest, a furze chat perches, with yellow
blossom above and beneath him. Rushes mark the margin of small pools and
marshy spots, so overhung with brambles and birch branches, and so
closely surrounded by gorse, that they would not otherwise be noticed.

But the thick growth of rushes intimates that water is near, and upon
parting the bushes a little may be seen, all that has escaped
evaporation in the shade. From one of these marshy spots I once--and
once only--observed a snipe rise, and after wheeling round return and
settle by another. As the wiry grass becomes paler with the fall of the
year, the rushes, on the contrary, from green become faintly yellow, and
presently brownish. Grey grass and brown rushes, dark furze, and fern,
almost copper in hue from frost, when lit up by a gleam of winter
sunshine form a pleasant breadth of warm colour in the midst of bare
fields.

After continuous showers in spring, lizards are often found in the
adjacent gardens, their dark backs as they crawl over the patches being
almost exactly the tint of the moist earth. If touched, the tail is
immediately coiled, the body stiffens, and the creature appears dead.
They are popularly supposed to come from the furze, which is also
believed to shelter adders.

There is, indeed, scarcely a cover in Surrey and Kent which is not said
to have its adders; the gardeners employed at villas close to the
metropolis occasionally raise an alarm,