could stay an hour, but
they are the exact kind of cover game like. One morning this spring,
indeed, I noticed a cock-pheasant calmly walking along the ridge of a
furrow in the ploughed field, parted from these bushes by the hedge. He
was so near the highway that I could see the ring about his neck. I have
seen peewits or green plovers in the same field, which is now about to
be built on. But though no game could stay an hour in such places,
lesser birds love them, white-throats build there, gold-crests come down
from the dark pines opposite--they seem fond of pines--yellow-hammers
sit and sing on them, and they are visited all day long by one or other.
The little yellow flowers of tormentil are common in the grass as autumn
approaches, and grasshoppers, which do not seem plentiful here, sing
there. Some betony flowers are opposite on the other sward. There is a
marshy spot by one of the bushes where among the rushes various
semi-aquatic grasses grow. Blackberries are thick in favourable
seasons--like all fruit, they are an uncertain crop; and hawkweeds are
there everywhere on the sward towards the edge. The peculiar green of
fern, which is more of a relief to the eye than any other shrub with
which I am acquainted, so much so that I wonder it is not more imitated,
is remarkable here when the burning July sun shines on the white dust
thus fringed. By then trees are gone off in colour, the hedges are tired
with heat, but the fern is a soft green which holds the glance. This
varies much with various seasons; this year the fern is particularly
late from a lack of moisture, but sometimes it is really beautiful
between these bushes. It is cut down in its full growth by those who
have charge of the road, and the scene is entirely destroyed for the
remainder of the season; it is not often that such bushes and such fern
are found beside the highway, and, if not any annoyance to the
residents, are quite as worthy of preservation (not "preservation" by
beadle) as open spaces like commons. Children, and many of larger
growth, revel about them, gathering the flowers in spring and summer,
the grasses and the blackberries in autumn. It is but a strip of sward,
but it is as wild as if in the midst of a forest. A pleasure to every
one--therefore destroy it.

In the evening from the rise of the road here I sometimes hear the cry
of a barn owl skirting the hedge of Southborough Park, and disappearing
under the shadow of the elms that sta