h are most pleasant to hear.
The invisible industrious corncrake, whose persistent cry comes from
nowhere and everywhere at once. The harsh warning of the jay who seems
to say "Man! man!" as he skulks off when his wood is invaded. The rough
noise of the ox-eye sharpening his little saw, and many others.

Then I must not forget the noise of birds in flocks, ranging from the
familiar wrangle of sparrows noisily going to roost, to the mysterious
sound of great flights of birds migrating at night, one of the most
romantic of sounds, but to me untranslatable, since I do not know the
language of these wanderers.

I come now to human sounds. It was exciting to wake at 5 o'clock some
morning in June, and to learn by the sound of scythes being whetted that
the mowers had arrived, and that the hay harvest had actually begun. The
field had been a great sea of tall grasses, pink with sorrel and white
with dog-daisies, a sacred sea into which we might not enter. But now we
could at least follow the mowers, and watch the growth of the tracks made
by their shifting feet, and listen to the swish of the scythes as the
swathes of fallen grass and flowers also grew in length. There was
something military in their rhythm, and something relentless and
machine-like in their persistence. But our admiration was mixed with
pity from the time that one of them told us that after the first day's
mowing he was too tired to sleep. In later years another sound was
associated with haymaking, when in an Alpine meadow the group of resting
peasants were heard hammering the blades of their little pre-Raphaelite
scythes to flatten the dents made by stones hidden among the grass.

A well-remembered sound that came near the end of the harvest was the cry
of "Stand fast!" which was heard at intervals warning the man in the
cart, whose duty it was to arrange the pitched-up hay, that a move was to
be made. Why it was necessary to shout the warning so that it could be
heard a quarter of a mile away I cannot say. But its impressive effect
depended on its loud chant-like tone. This sound is connected with
recollections of riding in the empty hay-cart, from the sea-green stack
mysteriously growing in the corner of the field back to where hay waited
to be carted. The inside of the hay-cart was enchantingly polished, and
also full of hay-seed, which had a charm for me. The hay-making at Down
was a leisurely affair, with many women gossiping as they gent