Each point of vantage on the hills has its time-worn lines of old entrenchments. There is hardly a lofty crest but has had its cluster of green grave mounds. But of the builders there remains little but the shapes of their ruined strongholds, their rude pottery, and still ruder weapons, from which to build up our dim conjectures of what manner of men they were who held these hill tops against the arms of Claudius and Vespasian. Even of the legionaries who forced their way thus far into the West, our knowledge has been gained by fragments. It is by accident that we have obtained our most vivid glimpses of their arts, their arms, their way of life. Massive ingots of lead have from time to time been found in the fields or along the line of one or other of the old military roads, whose stamps showed clearly how soon, after the landing of Claudius, the conquerors took possession of the mining country.

Again, when the plough struck on a stone coffin in a field remote from any sign of human occupation; and when further search revealed the ruins of a Roman villa, with beautiful pavements still undisturbed, it was possible to guess, from the lettering of the coins which were strewn among broken amphoræ and scraps of Samian, the very year in which the house was last inhabited. Many a hoard of silver pieces has been found among these hills, buried doubtless in some "dark hour of doubt and dread," to wait for better times that never came. Many a time the labourer's spade has clashed on a rusted spear-head, a broken urn, a handful of denarii. At times even on

Relics like these—a flint arrowhead, a fragment of pottery, a handful of denarii, a camp, a tumulus—eke out the scanty records of the time, the pages of Asser, the meagre outlines of the Saxon chronicle.

Hardly a point in all the landscape but is linked with some stirring memory. It was on the little island lying off the point here that Githa found refuge after Hastings. Two years later all this shore was ravaged by the sons of Harold; and in the Domesday record, made eighteen years afterwards, we still can trace their handiwork in the lessened values of villages they had plundered. Over and over again after the brief sketch of a hamlet, its list of boors and villeins, its corn and grass land, its mill, its fishpond—perhaps even its patch of vineyard—follow such words as these: "it was worth 100s., now only 60"; or "it was worth four pounds, now only 40 shillings."

In the Armada days—for half a century, indeed, before the sailing of "that great fleet invincible"—there stood, on the high ground across the river, according to a quaint map of the period, "The Coste of England uppon Seuerne," a tower, in which a gun was mounted, as a defence against invasion. Not a stone remains of the tower which in King Harry's time guarded the little port. But all this coast was armed and ready, years before the sailing of the Armada, watching for the red glow on Dawnsboro' that should call up the bold yeomen of the moors to face the "Inquisition dogs, and the devildoms of Spain."

"The trewthe is," wrote the Muster-Master, in his report to the Government—"after having vewed and trayned the nombers bothe of foote and horse twyce since my coming into this countie—the trewthe is, it is a most gallaunte contrey for the men, armor, and rediness." The authorities were constantly furnished with "Certyffycathes," showing the numbers of duly qualified pikemen and archers. Again and again were the justices urged to keep everything in readiness, since "the wings of man's life are plumed with the feathers of death"; and to train their men to meet any emergency, because "great dilatory wants are found upon all sudden hurly-burlies." Early Orders in Council declared that any able-bodied man between seventeen and fifty-nine who should be found to "lacke a bowe and fower arrowes" was to be fined.

Later, in Elizabeth's reign, more attention was paid to the use of firearms, and most minute instructions were issued from headquarters as to the training of marksmen. The musket was to be fired at first with priming only, then with half a charge, and finally, when the men were ready for it, the full amount of powder was to be used. This was with an eye to the right training of men who, "by reason of the churlishness of their pieces, and not being made acquainted therewith by degrees, are ever after so discouraged as either they wincke or pull their heades from the piece, whereby they take no perfect level, but shoot at random, and so never prove good shottes."

Among the seaweed on the bank of shingle by the cottage all kinds of strange things are found—palm wood, long bamboos, seeds from the West Indies, sabots, children's toys. Once even a clock was washed up on the beach. A few months since the sands were strewn with parts of carriages from the wreck of a vessel that was carrying railway plant to South America. As you stand in the little garden, whose broad edges are none too good protection for it against the wind, you will notice that everything about the place has a touch of this sombre local colouring. Every piece of woodwork is part of a wreck. There is not a hinge or a bolt, hardly a nail even that did not come out of some ship's fittings. The posts on which the garden gate is hung are pieces of a mast. The gate itself is made of planks that have been picked up on the sand. Mahogany panels from the saloon of some steamship have been worked into the walling of the garden shed. No coal is ever needed here. A little peat is all that is wanted. The sea brings an endless store of firewood almost to the door.

Too often, alas! the ebbing tide leaves yet sadder jetsam on the shore—white, still figures, lying face down on the yellow sand; to be lifted reverently, perhaps, but yet by stranger hands, and committed with brief rites to the corner of the ancient burial-ground on the headland yonder, where "the little grey church on the windy hill" stands among the green graves of centuries, roofless, dismantled, and forlorn.

The man who can look back over thirty years of rural life, of life spent among woods and meadows, has doubtless learnt something at least of the ways of the wild creatures of his district, of its beasts and birds, of its reptiles, and fish, and insects, even of forms of life still lower in the scale. In the works of Nature, her lovers find a never-failing charm. There is no book like hers, as we read it in green field and country lane, in copse, and stream, and hedge-row. There is no voice like hers, as we hear it in the sounds of the wood, in the sounds of the sea, in the sounds of the night. No poet ever breathed such songs. No writer of romance has ever woven such tales of mystery and wonder.

There are few of us probably who, looking back on the country life of our early days, would not be ready to admit that among its pursuits and pleasures, many and various as they were, the art and craft of birds'-nesting stood supreme. It is a pursuit that has a charm peculiarly its own. It may be that, in the days of our youth, the love of having and holding was one chief motive; a love that some of us have not shaken off yet, though perhaps, it is lavished on more useful things. Even the lust of plunder and destruction may have had its weight with us, as we feel sure it has with the village children. Not every nest-robber, it is true, is really a lover of Nature. But the birds'-nester who is a naturalist born soon wakens, not only to the beauty, but to the significance, of his fragile treasures.

Perhaps few young collectors pay much conscious attention to the construction of the nest, or notice how skilfully its materials are made to harmonise with its surroundings, or see how wonderfully some eggs are protected by their colouring. But his would be a dull soul on whom these things did not, sooner or later, make some impression. There are some birds'-nesters who are no longer young—no longer able to climb a tree or ford a river, to whom, year after year, the season of nests brings new delight; to whom the exquisite workmanship of the chaffinch seems each year more wonderful than ever, and in whose eyes the blue of a song-thrush's egg will never lose its charm.

These two nightjars' eggs, for example, are exquisitely beautiful, with their soft shades of brown and grey, veined like some rare marble. But as you look at them you think less of their beauty than of the moment when, in the corner of the old orchard, the bird got up, almost under your feet, and you watched it sail away to one of the fir-trees in the hedge-row, and crouch down on a low branch to watch your movements. Then, looking down, you saw, on the bare earth, these eggs, so near that another step would have crushed them. This is only a magpie's egg, but the date on it reminds you of that stiff climb up the giant fir-tree in the coppice, when for want of a box to carry them in, you had to bring your spoil down in your cap held between your teeth; while the farmer below shouted encouragingly: "Bring 'em all, sir; doän't 'ee leave none on 'em. I doän't want none o' they varmint on my ground."

Here is a kestrel's egg on which there is a date written, and a name—the name of a once-familiar hill-top. As you look, the scene of long ago comes back. It was an early morning in May. The dew lay heavy on the bracken, whose stout young fronds joined hands across the path. And as you paused on the hill slope and looked back, you saw how all the upland pastures, and the broad meadow lands below, were glistening in the light of the just risen sun. Through the grey haze that veiled the distance showed, faintly and more faint, range after range of low blue hills, with white hamlets glimmering here and there. The light of sunrise had just caught the windows of the old manor house on the slope, some mile away, and they flashed and flamed like fire. The grey cliffs above you had the flush of dawn upon their storm-worn steeps, and the light air tossed the leaves of the wayfaring trees rooted in the crannies, till they glittered like blades of silver. Among the elms about the farmstead, on the knoll below, sounded the uneasy chatter of a magpie. A crow was flying leisurely up to his fastness in the clump of old Scotch firs on the low hill-top. From a belt of coppice further down there rose at intervals, above the low sweet notes of the warblers, the clear call of a cuckoo. Overhead a woodlark drifted in vast circles, singing as he flew.

When at length you gained the hill crest, you heard the challenge of a black-cock. Over the wide pasture the lapwings were calling. Now they wheeled across the pale blue heaven, now they swooped swiftly almost to the ground, turning over and over in the air. Now one flew by, so near that you saw clearly the long plume upon his glossy head, and heard the musical throb of his strong wings sounding loud in the quiet morning air.

As you paused on the short turf close to the brow of the cliff, and looking down once more, saw your shadow falling on the young corn of the ploughed land far below, a hawk dashed out from the cliff below you, and then, staying its swift course, hovered a moment in mid air, while the sunshine lighted up its rich brown plumage. As you peered over the brink of the cliff there were no signs of a nest. But a tall sapling rooted in a ledge some ten feet below looked safe to hold by. Cautiously you slid over the edge, and dropped within reach of the branches, and so, from ledge to ledge, you climbed slowly down, holding on by points of rock or tufts of grass, or stems of ivy, until—yes, there, at your feet, in an arched crevice of the cliff, on a little earth, with no sort of nest, lay the four exquisite eggs, whose radiant beauty—so much richer five-and-twenty years since—seemed to your enraptured gaze to light up the little hollow. As you stooped to take one of them in your hand—how warm it was—and clung there, gloating over the beauty of your treasure, the old hawk hovered near, sounding at times her wild cry of anger and alarm, answered far off by her fierce mate, hurrying homeward on his swift, keen wings.

It is not given to all alike to be able to appreciate the true pleasure of a country walk. It is a thing that many of us prize, and that even more of us long for. And yet there are some people, really fond of walking, to whom it seems to make little difference whether their road goes evenly along the Queen's highway, and is hemmed in by straight stone walls, or loiters through winding by-ways, under banks crowned with straggling hedge-rows, overhung with sheltering elms. There are those who take their weekly tramp, and who say they like it best so, on Sunday, through the monotonous dreariness of London streets. To them a country walk, with its possible mud, and with its certain solitude and tameness, is, at least in fancy, flat and stale and altogether profitless.

It is largely a matter of training. We may learn to love bricks and mortar and the traffic of the town more than the quiet of woods and meadows, and the companionship of the everlasting hills. But there are others who cannot breathe amid the stir and noise and money-grubbing fever of the city; to whom the air of the open country is the Elixir of Life; who love its restful quietude, and who, at each turn along the favourite path, look for some old friend, some familiar bird, or flower, or insect.

With those who are really fond of rural life, other things have weight besides the mere landscape, besides the beauty of the view or the exhilaration of the keen air of the hill-tops. The charm of woodland walk, of river path, of quiet lanes, or of lonely places in the hills, is increased a hundredfold by some knowledge of rural sights and sounds. A power to recognise the songs of birds, some acquaintance with insect life, a little plant lore, a little knowledge of rocks and fossils—in a word, some tincture of Natural History—combine to make a ramble in the country one of the best things that life can offer us.

This love of Nature is again largely a matter of training. Schoolboys, as a race, are strangely slow at first to see plants, or shells, or fossils. But the young birds'-nester, for instance, whose first motive was, it may be, nothing nobler than the lust of having and holding, the love of plunder, or even the savage pleasure of destruction, may soon be trained to see the meaning of the shape and tints and markings of the eggs; not only to appreciate the beauty of the nest and the skill with which it was put together, but to learn in time the song of the builder and to know something of its habits. The butterfly hunter may be taught to recognise not merely the beauty of his captives, but to see something of those marvellous devices by which Nature hides caterpillar and chrysalis, and even perfect insect, from prying eyes.

The boy who has acquired a love for Natural History has something to be thankful for, all the days of his life, a possession that may be the means of bringing more comfort to his soul than all the wisdom of the ancients. Of no man can it be so truly said as of the naturalist that he

It is true enough that, to most men, a knowledge of flowers or fossils, of insect life or of the habits of birds, will bring no return in hard cash. But there are other things in life besides a balance at the banker's. And a love of art is not more lucrative, or a taste for music or for books.

There are people who, if they would, might do much to aid the study of Natural History; people whose avocations take them much into the open air, and who have opportunities which some of us long for in vain. The fisherman, the keeper, the shepherd, and the farm labourer might, if they could be won over to take interest in such things, contribute not a little to our knowledge of the life history of even the most familiar of animals. Fishermen along the coast see things sometimes the description of which rouses envy in the breasts of less fortunate listeners. Not long since a man was rowing out to his nets in the early morning just outside the bar of a small tidal river in the West Country, when he saw a raven sweeping slowly along the hill-slope near by—the grassy side of a long promontory stretching far out into the sea, muttering to itself at times with that deep voice that, happily, is still familiar to the long-shore dwellers on that coast. Suddenly the bird paused, and with swift descent swooped down among the brown heather and the stunted bushes of the hill, seizing in its strong claws a hare that had been lying crouched among the herbage. But the bird was too late in using its beak or else missed its stroke altogether, for in a moment the hare and the raven, locked fast together, rolled over and over, kicking, struggling, flapping down the rough slope below; until the bird, dismayed by such an unwonted experience and the buffeting of the rocks and broken ground, let go its hold. The hare was on its feet and had vanished like a flash, while the baffled raven, rising slowly in the air, sailed reluctantly away.

The naturalist is not now, even in country districts, looked upon quite in the same light as he once was—but one degree removed from the state of lunatic. The old order of things, the prejudice, the bigotry, the superstition of half a century ago has to a great degree disappeared. There are many English parishes still without a railway; there is none probably without a newspaper. The presence of a single naturalist, parson or village doctor, or what not, has been known, like the little leaven that leaveneth the whole lump, to rouse a real interest among the neighbours in birds and beasts and even insects. A man's reputation for being fond of strange creatures may perhaps be laughed at, at first, and perhaps be always a little looked down on. But by degrees, very slow it may be, the influence spreads. The keeper brings him a strange bird, the labourer a nest of dormice found in stubbing up a hedge-row, or a clutch of quails' eggs he has come upon among the clover. The old mole catcher, too, is a very mine of stories about the strange beasts he has seen in his sixty years' experience. One of his most wonderful tales is about the great snake—"more 'n that long,"—a matter of five feet or so,—which he killed as it was sucking the milk of a cow: "and" as he will add triumphantly, "there were more 'n a pint of milk in him":—the crushed eggs of the unfortunate reptile no doubt, but it is altogether useless to suggest any such paltry explanation.

One autumn a boy at work among the potatoes turned up with his spade something that instantly, so he declared, became a bird and flew away. The boy ran home in horror. His parents would not believe a word of the story, but the boy was too big to be flogged as a mere liar. They were greatly relieved on learning that something of the kind was at least possible, and regarded with no little interest a Death's Head hawkmoth, for such no doubt the apparition was, preserved in a collection.

The change from egg to caterpillar is a thing with which every rustic is probably familiar; but in remote rural districts there are still men who cannot believe that a caterpillar can ever become a butterfly, and who still entertain strange superstitions about toads and snakes and slow worms.

Perhaps in time the County Councils may do something for the rustic enlightenment, by means of lectures and the limelight. The rural population is, however, notoriously hard of belief; is the most difficult of all populations to move from the faiths of their fathers. There is many a farmer's wife even yet who will labour with the churn from morning till night,—lamenting all the while that the butter will not come,—rather than by the use of a thermometer so regulate the temperature that the whole process would be over in half-an-hour. A series of lectures lately given in Somersetshire on the management of farm stock was, however, well attended by the younger farmers at any rate. They were keenly interested, and although they may, perhaps, have mostly adjourned afterwards to discuss each discourse at the public-house, it was not as sceptics; and the local ironmonger always found it necessary to lay in a stock of thermometers as soon as the lectures had begun. The older men mostly kept aloof. They had no faith in any new-fangled ways. They are a stiff-necked generation. As their fathers did, so do they. One burly, red-faced farmer of the old school was lately heard to express his contempt for the educational efforts of the County Council. "What be the use," said he, "of wasting the public money sending round men to talk about a dairy as don't know a cow from a elephant? And these yar cook'ry classes. 'Tis my belief that if a man have got summat to cook, he'll soon find out how to cook un."

With a few popular lectures and a little practical help and guidance the farmer and the farm labourer might render untold service to science, with all their long hours in the open air, summer and winter, seedtime and harvest. They see some strange things now, or think they see them. Snakes are the theme of many marvellous tales. "I were walking along the path through the wheat," said an old villager, "when I heard a rustling, like a robbut: I thought 'twere a robbut. But a gurt viper come out of the wheat and jumped across the path so high's my head."

A captive tortoise escaped one day into the road, and was soon the centre of a knot of astonished villagers. After long debate they concluded it was either "a tremendous gurt tooad, or some wendimous warmint"; and they decided to kill it on the spot—a task of no small difficulty, as may well be imagined.

On the south slope of an old West Country orchard there is a sheltered corner lying open to the sun. Above it rises a broad, unkempt, straggling hedge-row—holly and hawthorn, bramble and sweetbriar—and behind this again the green slopes of the hill. On the left, rising at intervals through the tangled thickets that form the eastern limit of the orchard, is a line of old Scotch firs, and beyond them, dimly seen through the haze that broods over the landscape, are the grey ramparts of a range of limestone cliffs. The wind of March is in the dark foliage of the firs, tossing their gnarled arms against the pallid sky. But here the golden blossoms of the gorse, the brown stems of last year's bracken, stand unmoved. The dark firs are stirring with a sound as of the sea, but here, on this sunlit slope, is the very air of summer,

Butterflies flit idly by—dark-winged peacocks, soft brown tortoise-shells, pale yellow brimstones like flying gleams of sunshine. The apple boughs are fretted all over with fine points of green, the purple mist round the heads of the great elms deepens in the warm air, the old hedge-row wears already the bright garb of spring. The air is full of spring time, of the breath of primroses and violets, full of pleasant sounds of country life, of the wakening of the world, of the happy voices of a hundred birds, whose glad hearts are revelling in the golden weather.

The birds know well this sunny hollow. Here spring comes early, and summer lingers late. While the fields without are white with wintry rime,

To-day, on every side, the feathered woodlanders are stirring. From an old Scotch fir that towers out of the hedge-row—its dark shape showing like a shadow through the leafless boughs of the apple-trees—falls the rich music of a blackbird's song, clear and wild and flute-like. He is a noble singer; less great, indeed, than the song-thrush, but yet a master of his art. And there are those who hold that there is more beauty in the depth and richness, in the power and passion, of his few brief bars, than in all the magnificent anthem of his rival. Farther off, low down in a leafless elm by the border of the orchard, is the thrush himself, flooding the whole glade with his wonderful melody. Over and over there sounds the polished lyric of the wren; over and over again the metallic clink of a coaltit rings out above the plaintive carol of the robin, the sober ditty of the hedge-sparrow. Over all the fields the larks are singing. In the hedges that skirt the orchard sounds the sweet cadence of the chaffinch, the wild warble of the missel-thrush, at times the ringing call of some light-hearted oxeye. From farther up the hollow, from his sanctuary in the old, neglected wilderness of unpruned, lichen-coated trees, floats down the soft laugh of a woodpecker, a mellow sound, a note of peace and solitude, and sylvan greenness. Is it only fancy that here, among these hills, in this sweet country air, among these untarnished immemorial elms, there is more melody in the skylark's song, that there is a finer tone in the cool, clear singing of the robin, that there is a touch of music in the chatter of the very sparrows? But hark, a fainter note floats lightly down from the tree-tops; a note not strong or musical, but heard through all the blended harmonies of a score of singers. It is the call of the chiff-chaff, the first returning wanderer from the warm south, fresh from the orange groves of Sorrento, or the sunny slopes of the Sabine hills. When his small figure shows presently against the dark foliage of a Scotch fir, there is that about him which seems to suggest that he is well content with his home-coming, even though woods are bare and skies are cheerless. He flutters up and down among the branches, never still for a moment. Even when he pauses,—looking like a point of light against the sombre leaves behind him,—to call his own name over and over, it is easy to see that his whole small figure is trembling with the ardour of his eager little soul.

A tiny figure, and a simple song. But there is more of meaning in those few faint notes than in all the rest of the great chorus that day by day is gathering strength in the woodland. For in the chiff-chaff's call there is the Promise of Spring. It is said that when the Siberian exiles hear for the first time, after their long and bitter winter, the cry of the cuckoo, the familiar voice rouses in their weary souls a resistless longing to taste once more, if only for a day, the sweets of freedom; that there are always some who, at the summons, elude the vigilance of their guards, and take to the forest, lured by the magic of that wandering voice. And so, in our hearts, this feeble note rouses a longing for green fields and country lanes, for flowers and sunshine, for summer and the coming of the swallows.

Somewhere in the elms a nuthatch sounds at intervals his flute-like call—a wandering voice, now among the topmost branches, whose sunlit purple holds so well against the pallid blue, now near the ground, now in some mighty bough that leans far out over the field. Now the bird's figure shows darkly on the sky, and now, as he glides head foremost down, like the born acrobat that he is, his grey plumage lights up for a moment in the sunshine. And now he leaves the tree, still calling as he flies, and sinks down among that grey fringe of orchard, where his mate and he have, perhaps, already fixed on the hole in the old apple tree in which they mean to take up their quarters for the season.

The old hedge-rows round the orchard are but wintry still for the most part, save for a few buds of hawthorn just breaking into leaf, or an elder bush already tinged with green. But on the banks of the tiny stream that wanders leisurely along the lane below, celandine and sweet violet are in bloom; and primroses, no longer pale and stunted, as in the rougher days of March, lend their rare perfume to the air. Meadowsweet and brooklime are springing by the oozy shore, and on the dark boughs of the alders that lean over it the catkins cluster thick.

In a blackthorn bush, whose armed sprays are lightly touched with blossom as with new fallen snow, two wrens alight; two tiny figures, mere balls of brown feather, so near that every line of the wavy, shell-like marking on their backs is plain to see. Now one of them, poised on a briar stem, breaks suddenly into song, turning from side to side, his wings parted, his atom of a tail expanded to the full. The brief lyric ended, he flies down to join his mate, who waits demurely in the bush below, and for a minute or two they flutter and play, and whisper to each other soft notes of fond endearment—the sweetest bit of love-making imaginable.

Farther on, in a young oak tree in the hedge-row, two blackbirds have alighted. Not lovers, nothing like it, paying no manner of heed to each other's presence. One of them flies down—a splendid figure, with his new black coat, with the bright golden orange of his bill. Instantly the other is down too, in front of him. A moment they stand thus, motionless. Then, with loud notes of challenge, they tilt headlong at each other, beaks down, wings and tail spread wide, their whole dark plumage rough with rage. Again and again they meet in the shock of battle, rushing each on the other's weapon, rising at last into the air, fluttering and fighting, the snapping of their bills heard plainly fifty yards away. Five minutes only the conflict lasts. More than one historic field has been lost and won in time as brief. It is all over. The victor stands alone upon the grass. His beaten rival is in full flight far down the hedge-row. A moment later the queen of beauty, who from her perch among the blackthorns has watched the tournament unseen, flies down to the hero of her choice. It is the old story; a tale far older than the days of Thais—"None but the brave, none but the brave, none but the brave deserves the fair."

Here in this happy valley there has not been, for weeks past, one clouded hour. March has shown, all through, the temper of the lamb; nor now, in his last hours, does he show signs of changing mood. To seaward it is true the haze deepens to a cold grey fog, and the sullen booming of the distant fog guns is sounding faintly, at intervals, even now. On the hill the lapwings are calling, their plaintive voices softened by the distance, and at times their dark figures show against the pale blue sky, as they rise and fall above the limestone cliffs that skirt the hill.

Yonder crow, drifting up the slope, keeping low down, as if fearing to be seen, is making for his fastness among the fir-trees on the hill-crest higher up. He may well keep out of sight. Only last week two lambs were found in a field near the crow's nest, dying, with their eyes torn out. And the magpie, chuckling now and then in doubtful tone, somewhere at the foot of the orchard, has here a reputation almost as much blown upon. Terrible fellows, both of them, in lambing time or in the poultry yard. But they have been working hard and honestly enough all the rest of the year. Some people seem to think that the destruction of a chicken or two, or the theft of a few eggs, far outweighs a whole year of good deeds—the slaughter of unnumbered grubs, wire-worms, mice, and beetles.

At regular intervals, a few seconds apart, there sounds from a tall ash tree in the hollow the drone of a greenfinch, monotonous and unmusical. Was there ever such a drowsy sound? And yet when he breaks off presently in a stave of his own wild song, his voice is one of the sweetest of sweet sounds, a light and breezy ripple of love and sun and happiness. Pleasant, too, are the notes of the chaffinches that flit in and out of the hedgerow. And never surely was there sweeter blackbird's song than that wild lyric sounding now among the trees that overhang the well. In the top of the great elm that leans over the orchard stile there is such a chorus of tongues, such a babel of linnet and blackbird, of sparrow and jackdaw, with intervals of untuneful chattering, whistling, piping, that you fancy twenty performers at the least. But it is only a starling telling all the world in his quaint way of his joy in this unwonted sunshine. Now he breaks off into the song of a swallow, copied from the life. He may have heard it this very morning. Or it may be merely that the impulse of the spring time rouses in his heart a memory of the long absent wanderer, just as on rough days of autumn you may hear him mock the curlew's cry because the wind is roaring like the sea.

A very real note of spring is the hum of that burly bumble-bee sailing along the hedge-row in search of some convenient hollow, some abandoned mouse-hole it may be, in which to build her nest. Her nest, not his, or theirs. She has no mate. He died in the autumn, and on her alone devolves the labour of rearing the new generation.

Among the stones that years of patient toil have heaped under this straggling hedge-row, the long-hidden slaves of Nature are broad awake and busy, revelling in the brightness of these delightful days. A crowd of insects, flies, and bees, and beetles are coming out of their long hiding to sun their stiffened limbs. Butterflies flit lightly down the hedge-row, some newly waked from sleep, and some that have but just broken the dry husk of their chrysalis condition, and are spreading for the first time their beautiful wings.

To the lover of the sights and sounds of Nature, life has few better things to offer than a quiet hour, some bright spring morning, under the shadow of a green arch of blossomed boughs, in company with gentle, beautiful, sweet-voiced poets of the air, glad, like him, in the sunshine and the fragrance. Is it a mere flight of fancy that the feathered architects, no less than the ballad singers, of this out-of-the-way corner of the world are masters of their art above the birds of less favoured regions? Look at this chaffinch's nest, cradled in the end of an apple-bough, so dexterously woven in among the twigs in which it rests, so daintily touched with silvery points of lichen, so perfect a harmony with its surroundings that one might well fancy it had grown there, some strange product of the tree. While just above it, an apple bough in bloom, the rich gold of clustered stamens just showing through the white and pink of still half-open flowers, lends the crowning touch of beauty.

Few birds, perhaps, have employed more curious decoration than a pair of hedge sparrows, who, this spring, attached to their nest with strands of bass a label, bearing in large letters the legend, "Early English." In a crevice of the old wall, just outside the orchard, is the work of another master-builder, a wren. The dry grass and skeleton leaves of its framework match exactly with the weather-worn and lichen-stained masonry about it. And slender sprays of ivy, clinging to the rough surface of the stone, spread round it their beautiful young leaves. Another wren's nest, in an old stump, just filling a space among great grey ivy stems, is built wholly of moss, so fresh and green, so true a copy of the natural growths on the dead wood, that the eye would hardly have discovered it, had not the little architect itself betrayed it. But there is a third wren's nest, in the old cart-shed in the corner of the orchard, that surpasses even these. It is built of dry grass, in the straw of the thatch, framed by the rough rafters, and around it, and over it, there hang down as if to hide it the threshed-out ears that have been left upon the straw. And within the small round entrance is the builder's tiny head, her bright eyes showing plainly in the ring of shadow. Wrens are among the shyest and most fastidious of birds. Many a one has abandoned her nest, and all the eggs in it, because some curious passer-by has touched it in her absence, never so gently. But this one, as if confiding in the honour of her visitors, sits on unmoved. There is a ringdove's nest quite low down in a holly tree in the orchard hedge, and not only will the bird allow you to stand beneath and watch her, but when, a few days since, a ladder was placed against the tree, she waited until she was within arm's reach before she left her nest. She made a fine picture as she sat there, proudly unconscious of the intruders, not even deigning to turn her head to look at them, the soft lavender of her beautiful plumage relieved by the clouding of white feathers on her neck. At length she could bear it no longer. She went crashing off through the holly twigs, her great wings clattering as she flew. So shallow and insecure was the frail platform on which she had been sitting, that her sudden start threw one of her two nestlings over the side. It was handed up again, apparently none the worse for its adventure; and the two youngsters crouched trembling in the slight hollow; two blind, helpless, hideous, evil-looking little creatures; a whole world of difference between them and the stately, fearless bird who, a minute before, had covered them with the shadow of her wings.

More fearless still is a blue-tit that has her dwelling in a crevice in the wall some fifty yards further on. It is a tiny hole, and the nest is far in, but you can see her sitting there, her pretty head and one of her bright eyes just showing over the mossy rim. She is not in the least shy of being looked at. Indeed, if you touch her nest with a straw she will spar at it and hiss, making a noise for all the world like the spitting of an angry kitten, even coming to the door to storm at the intruder, but without the least idea of leaving her unprotected offspring to his mercy.

But other tenants of the hollow revel in the sunshine besides the birds and the bees and the butterflies. These straggling hedge-rows are the haunt of finch and blackbird. Crow and magpie and squirrel hide their homes among the thick foliage of the firs. Nightjars love this quiet corner, and the nuthatch and the wryneck find sanctuary in the hollows of the trees. But the stony bank along the hedge, sweet now with violets, and strewn with stars of celandine spreading wide their golden petals to the sun, is of all spots the viper's favourite haunt.

All along the bank and far in among the thickets are heaped fragments of red sandstone that by slow degrees have been cleared from these sterile pastures. The sun is on them from dawn till sunset. They are quite hot to the touch. Here, then, the viper loves to lie, warming his cold heart upon the heated stone. On a day like this he is wide awake, quick in his movements, and off like a flash, especially if once alarmed. Slowly, silently, with stealthy steps must you approach his haunt.

There he is, loosely coiled against a flat slab of sandstone, his cold, unwinking eye set in a fixed stare, looking straight this way. The broad zigzag stripe along his back is boldly drawn on the pale brown of his coat. Plain even at this distance is the V-like mark upon his head. But he has begun to move. Before you can reach him he has vanished among the stones. There is nothing for it but to sit down a few yards away, hidden by a dwarf blackthorn bush, and wait patiently for his re-appearing. How quiet it all is. The hamlet on the hill-slope yonder—

looms faintly through the haze. The white houses scattered through the valley melt away into the mist. But the sun is still warm. The cones of the old firs crackle in the sunshine. Still sweeter grows the faint perfume of the gorse, still more beautiful its radiant gold. A bullfinch settles in a tree hard by. There is no colour in Nature more beautiful than the exquisite flush of crimson on his breast. Quite in keeping with his beauty is the soft sweetness of the tender love note that now and then he whispers to his mate, who, in colours far less bright than his, sits just below him on a lichened apple bough. Hark! a faint sound among the dry brambles on the bank, a long rustle, and then through the blackthorn stems the slender shape of the viper glides softly down to the warm stones.

Here he comes, gliding boldly from his harbour in the bank. His brown mail glistens in the sun, his red eyes glance swiftly right and left, his long tongue flickers through his fast shut lips. He coils his long body round between two stones, whose warm red seems warmer still to-day, fitting himself comfortably in the angle of the stones, there he lies motionless. Small beetles creep over him unseen and unregarded. He pays no heed when a butterfly settles close by him to sun its splendid wings. But he is broad awake.

Now move slowly towards the spot. Some sound startles him. He lifts his head and gives a swift glance this way. He is going. Twitch him out on the grass with your stick, hold him down a moment, and then, watching your opportunity, take him up by the tail. An angry beast he is, hissing and struggling, making vain attempts to reach his captor's hand. He can only lift his head a few inches, and there is no fear at all of his doing any harm. There is no doubt about the harm he can do. A viper's bite, especially in hot weather, is painful enough, though seldom dangerous. But the farmer who comes up at this moment eyes the captive with grim satisfaction. Heifers, he says, are often bitten, even horses. "Doän't 'ee let un go," he adds anxiously; "I doän't like none o' they beasts about."

It is a very blaze of sunshine that fills the open spaces of the wood. The tall ash saplings that join hands across the path, now almost lost among the briar sprays, the trailing woodbine, and the long arms of wandering bryony, sway slowly in the hot and heavy air. But the stir of the leaves that flutter lightly overhead, their green lacework all dark against the summer sky, is a restful, soothing sound.

It is a pleasant relief to turn aside a little from the pathway, to wade breast high through the green jungle of the underwood to a little place out of the sunshine, a hollow walled half way round by a line of low grey rocks, almost hidden by thick tapestries of ivy. Two noble trees that stand on either side, two stately Spanish chestnuts, spread their arms over it, as if in benediction. Overhead, their