him, he said
that a person came sometimes and took away a trap-load of yarrow; the
flowers were to be boiled and mixed with cayenne pepper, as a remedy
for cold in the chest. In spring the dandelions here are pulled in
sackfuls, to be eaten as salad. These things have fallen so much into
disuse in the country that country people are surprised to find the
herbalists flourishing round the great city of progress.

The continued dry weather in the early summer of the present year, which
was so favourable to partridges and game, was equally favourable to the
increase of several other kinds of birds, and among these the jays.
Their screeching is often heard in this district, quite as often as it
is in country woodlands. One day in the spring I saw six all screeching
and yelling together up and down a hedge near the road. Now in October
they are plentiful. One flew across overhead with an acorn in its beak,
and perched in an elm beside the highway. He pecked at the acorn on the
bough, then glanced down, saw me, and fled, dropping the acorn, which
fell tap tap from branch to branch till it reached the mound.

Another jay actually flew up into a fir in the green, or lawn, before a
farm-house window, crossing the road to do so. Four together were
screeching in an elm close to the road, and since then I have seen
others with acorns, while walking there. Indeed, this autumn it is not
possible to go far without hearing their discordant and unmistakable
cry. They were never scarce here, but are unusually numerous this
season, and in the scattered trees of hedgerows their ways can be better
observed than in the close covert of copses and plantations, where you
hear them, but cannot see for the thick fir boughs.

It is curious to note the number of creatures to whom the oak furnishes
food. The jays, for instance, are now visiting them for acorns; in the
summer they fluttered round the then green branches for the chafers, and
in the evenings the fern owls or goat-suckers wheeled about the verge
for these and for moths. Rooks come to the oaks in crowds for the
acorns; wood-pigeons are even more fond of them, and from their crops
quite a handful may sometimes be taken when shot in the trees.

They will carry off at once as many acorns as old-fashioned economical
farmers used to walk about with in their pockets, "chucking" them one,
two, or three at a time to the pigs in the stye as a _bonne bouche_ and
an encouragement to fatten well.