d toll;
the weeds are hoed or pulled up, and at their roots there are more
insects; from the stalk and ears and the bloom of the rising corn they
seize caterpillars; when it is ripe they enjoy the grain; when it is cut
and carried there are ears in the stubble, and they can then feast on
the seeds of the innumerable plants that flowered among it; finally
comes the plough again. It is as if the men and horses worked for the
birds.

The horse-chestnut trees in the narrow copse bloom; the bees are humming
everywhere and summer is at hand. Presently the brown cockchafers will
come almost like an army of locusts, as suddenly appearing without a
sign. They seem to be particularly numerous where there is much maple in
the hedges.

Resting now on the sward by the stream--contracted in seeming by the
weeds and flags and fresh sedges--there comes the distant murmur of
voices and the musical laugh of girls. The ear tries to distinguish the
words and gather the meaning; but the syllables are intertangled--it is
like listening to a low sweet song in a language all unknown. This is
the water falling gently over the mossy hatch and splashing faintly on
the stones beneath; the blue dragon-flies dart over the smooth surface
or alight on a broad leaf--these blue dragon-flies when thus resting
curl the tail upwards.

Farther up above the mere there is a spot where the pool itself ends, or
rather imperceptibly disappears among a vast mass of aquatic weeds. To
these on the soft oozy mud succeed acres of sedge and rush and great
turfs of greyish grass. Low willows are scattered about, and alder at
the edge and where the ground is firmer. This is the home of the
dragon-flies, of the coots, whose white bald foreheads distinguish them
at a distance, and of the moorhens.

A narrow lane crosses it on a low bank or causeway but just raised above
the level of the floods. It is bordered on either side by thick hawthorn
hedges, and these again are further rendered more impassable by the
rankest growth of hemlocks, 'gicks,' nettles, hedge-parsley, and similar
coarse plants. In these the nettle-creeper (white-throat) hides her
nest, and they have so encroached that the footpath is almost
threatened. This lane leads from the Upper Woods across the marshy level
to the cornfields, being a branch from that down which Luke the
contractor carried his rabbits.

Now a hare coming from the uplands beyond the woods, or from the woods,
and desirous of visi