the gipsy-
gold tint--the reflection of fire on plates of the precious metal. It
will show even on a ring by firelight; blood in the gold, they say.
Gather the open marguerite daisies, and they seem large--so wide a disc,
such fingers of rays; but in the grass their size is toned by so much
green. Clover heads of honey lurk in the bunches and by the hidden
footpath. Like clubs from Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied
in shape: some tend to a point--the foxtails--some are hard and
cylindrical; others, avoiding the club shape, put forth the slenderest
branches with fruit of seed at the ends, which tremble as the air goes
by. Their stalks are ripening and becoming of the colour of hay while
yet the long blades remain green.

Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the foxtails are succeeded by
foxtails, the narrow blades by narrow blades, but never become
monotonous; sorrel stands by sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This bed of
veronica at the foot of the ancient apple has a whole handful of flowers,
and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak follows oak and elm ranks with
elm, but the woodlands are pleasant; however many times reduplicated,
their beauty only increases. So, too, the summer days; the sun rises on
the same grasses and green hedges, there is the same blue sky, but did we
ever have enough of them? No, not in a hundred years! There seems
always a depth, somewhere, unexplored, a thicket that has not been seen
through, a corner full of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree, which may give
us something. Bees go by me as I stand under the apple, but they pass on
for the most part bound on a long journey, across to the clover fields or
up to the thyme lands; only a few go down into the mowing-grass. The
hive bees are the most impatient of insects; they cannot bear to entangle
their wings beating against grasses or boughs. Not one will enter a
hedge. They like an open and level surface, places cropped by sheep, the
sward by the roadside, fields of clover, where the flower is not deep
under grass.

II.

It is the patient humble-bee that goes down into the forest of the mowing-
grass. If entangled, the humble-bee climbs up a sorrel stem and takes
wing, without any sign of annoyance. His broad back with tawny bar
buoyantly glides over the golden buttercups. He hums to himself as he
goes, so happy is he. He knows no skep, no cunning work in glass
receives his labour, no artificial saccharine aids