Nature Near London | Page 6

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 drawn
it a little way, become motionless, reposing as they stand, every line of
their large limbs expressing delight in physical ease and idleness.
Perhaps the heat has made the men silent, for scarcely a word is spoken;
if it were, in the stillness it must be heard, though they are at some
distance. The wheels, well greased for the heavy harvest work, do not
creak. Save an occasional monosyllable, as the horses are ordered on,
or to stop, and a faint rustling of straw, there is no sound. It may be the
flood of brilliant light, or the mirage of the heat, but in some way the
waggon and its rising load, the men and the horses, have an unreality of
appearance.

The yellow wheat and stubble, the dull yellow of the waggon, toned
down by years of weather, the green woods near at hand, darkening in
the distance and slowly changing to blue, the cloudless sky, the
heat-suffused atmosphere, in which things seem to float rather than to
grow or stand, the shadowless field, all are there, and yet are not there,
but far away and vision-like. The waggon, at last laden, travels away,
and seems rather to disappear of itself than to be hidden by the trees. It
is an effort to awake and move from the spot.

FOOTPATHS
"Always get over a stile," is the one rule that should ever be borne in
mind by those who wish to see the land as it really is--that is to say,
never omit to explore a footpath, for never was there a footpath yet
which did not pass something of interest.
In the meadows, everything comes pressing lovingly up to the path.
The small-leaved clover can scarce be driven back by frequent
footsteps from endeavouring to cover the bare earth of the centre. Tall
buttercups, round whose stalks the cattle have carefully grazed, stand in
ranks; strong ox-eye daisies, with broad white disks and torn leaves,
form with the grass the tricolour of the pasture--white, green, and gold.
When the path enters the mowing grass, ripe for the scythe, the
simplicity of these cardinal hues is lost in the multitude of shades and
the addition of other colours. The surface of mowing grass is indeed
made up of so many tints that at the first glance it is confusing; and
hence, perhaps, it is that hardly ever has an artist succeeded in getting
the effect upon canvas. Of the million blades of grass no two are of the
same shade.
Pluck a handful and spread them out side by side and this is at once
evident. Nor is any single blade the same shade all the way up. There
may be a faint yellow towards the root, a full green about the middle, at
the tip perhaps the hot sun has scorched it, and there is a trace of brown.
The older grass, which comes up earliest, is distinctly different in tint

from that which has but just reached its greatest height, and in which
the sap has not yet stood still.
Under all there is the new grass, short, sweet, and verdant, springing up
fresh between the old, and giving a tone to the rest as you look down
into the bunches. Some blades are nearly grey, some the palest green,
and among them others, torn from the roots perhaps by rooks searching
for grubs, are quite white. The very track of a rook through the grass
leaves a different shade each side, as the blades are bent or trampled
down.
The stalks of the bennets vary, some green, some yellowish, some
brown, some approaching whiteness, according to age and the
condition of the sap. Their tops, too, are never the same, whether the
pollen clings to the surface or whether it has gone. Here the green is