erch and sing just over the muddy water. A sow lies in the
mire. But the sweet swallows sing on softly; they do not see the
wallowing animal, the mud, the brown water; they see only the sunshine,
the golden buttercups, and the blue sky of summer. This is the true way
to look at this beautiful earth.

MAGPIE FIELDS

There were ten magpies together on the 9th of September 1881, in a field
of clover beside a road but twelve miles from Charing Cross. Ten magpies
would be a large number to see at once anywhere in the south, and not a
little remarkable so near town. The magpies were doubtless young birds
which had packed, and were bred in the nests in the numerous elms of the
hedgerows about there. At one time they were scattered over the field,
their white and black colours dotted everywhere, so that they seemed to
hold entire possession of it.

Then a knot of them gathered together, more came up, and there they were
all ten fluttering and restlessly moving. After a while they passed on
into the next field, which was stubble, and, collected in a bunch, were
even more conspicuous there, as the stubble did not conceal them so much
as the clover. That was on the 9th of September; by the end of the month
weeds had grown so high that the stubble itself in that field had
disappeared, and from a distance it looked like pasture. In the stubble
the magpies remained till I could watch them no longer.

A short time afterwards, on the 17th of September, looking over the
gateway of an adjacent field which had been wheat, then only recently
carried, a pheasant suddenly appeared rising up out of the stubble; and
then a second, and a third and fourth. So tall were the weeds that, in
a crouching posture, at the first glance they were not visible; then as
they fed, stretching their necks out, only the top of their backs could
be seen. Presently some more raised their heads in another part of the
field, then two more on the left side, and one under an oak by the
hedge, till seventeen were counted.

These seventeen pheasants were evidently all young birds, which had
wandered from covers, some distance, too, for there is no preserve
within a mile at least. Seven or eight came near each other, forming a
flock, but just out of gunshot from the road. They were all extremely
busy feeding in the stubble. Next day half-a-dozen or so still remained,
but the rest had scattered; some had gone across to an acre of barley
yet standing in a cor