drive goes
straight into the ashpoles, it is green above and green below, but a
long watch will reveal nothing living. The dry mounds must be full of
rabbits, there must be pheasants somewhere; but nothing visible. Once
only a whistling sound in the air directs the glance upwards, it is a
wood-pigeon flying at full speed. There are no bees, for there are no
flowers. There are no butterflies. The black flies are not numerous, and
rarely require a fanning from the ash spray carried to drive them off.

Two large dragon-flies rush up and down, and cross the lane, and rising
suddenly almost to the tops of the oaks swoop down again in bold
sweeping curves. The broad, deep ditch between the lane and the mound of
the wood is dry, but there are no short rustling sounds of mice.

The only sound is the continuous singing of the grasshoppers, and the
peculiar snapping noise they make as they spring, leaping along the
sward. The fierce sun of the ripe wheat pours down a fiery glow scarcely
to be borne except under the boughs; the hazel leaves already have lost
their green, the tips of the rushes are shrivelling, the grass becoming
brown; it is a scorched and parched desert of wood.

The finches have gone forth in troops to the stubble where the wheat has
been cut, and where they can revel on the seeds of the weeds now ripe.
Thrushes and blackbirds have gone to the streams, to splash and bathe,
and to the mown meadows, where in the short aftermath they can find
their food. There they will look out on the shady side of the hedge as
the sun declines, six or eight perhaps of them along the same hedge, but
all in the shadow, where the dew forms first as the evening falls, where
the grass feels cool and moist, while still on the sunny side it is warm
and dry.

The bees are busy on the heaths and along the hilltops, where there are
still flowers and honey, and the butterflies are with them. So the woods
are silent, still, and deserted, save by a stray rabbit among the
thistles, and the grasshoppers ceaselessly leaping in the grass.

Returning presently to the gateway just outside the wood, where upon
first coming the pheasants and partridges were dusting themselves, a
waggon is now passing among the corn and is being laden with the
sheaves. But afar off, across the broad field and under the wood, it
seems somehow only a part of the silence and the solitude. The men with
it move about the stubble, calmly toiling; the horses, having draw