The Life of the Fields

Produced by Malcolm Farmer
My thanks are due to those editors who have so kindly permitted me to reprint the following pages:— The Field-Play appeared in Time ; Bits of Oak Bark and The Pageant of Summer in Longman's Magazine ; Meadow Thoughts and Mind under Water in The Graphic ; Clematis Lane, Nature near Brighton, Sea, Sky, and Down, January in the Sussex Woods, and By the Exe in The Standard ; Notes on Landscape Painting, in The Magazine of Art ; Village Miners, in The Gentleman's Magazine ; Nature and the Gamekeeper, The Sacrifice to Trout, The Hovering of the Kestrel, and Birds Climbing the Air, in The St. James's Gazette ; Sport and Science, in The National Review ; The Water-Colley, in The Manchester Guardian ; Country Literature, Sunlight in a London Square, Venice in the East End, The Pigeons at the British Museum, and The Plainest City in Europe, in The Pall Mall Gazette .
Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch, told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different to that of grass or leaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little in the middle, like classical columns, and heavy with their sap and freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they had drawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry; some of the sweetness of the air had entered into their fibres, and the rushes—the common rushes—were full of beautiful summer. The white pollen of early grasses growing on the edge was dusted from them each time the hawthorn boughs were shaken by a thrush. These lower sprays came down in among the grass, and leaves and grass-blades touched. Smooth round stems of angelica, big as a gun-barrel, hollow and strong, stood on the slope of the mound, their tiers of well-balanced branches rising like those of a tree. Such a sturdy growth pushed back the ranks of hedge parsley in full white flower, which blocked every avenue and winding bird's-path of the bank. But the gix, or wild parsnip, reached already high above both, and would rear its fluted stalk, joint on joint, till it could face a man. Trees they were to the lesser birds, not even bending if perched on; but though so stout, the birds did not place their nests on or against them. Something in the odour of these umbelliferous plants, perhaps, is not quite liked; if brushed or bruised they give out a bitter greenish scent. Under their cover, well shaded and hidden, birds build, but not against or on the stems, though they will affix their nests to much less certain supports. With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the rushes in the ditch itself, and these great plants on the mound, the whole hedge was wrapped and thickened. No cunning of glance could see through it; it would have needed a ladder to help any one look over.