run with couch-grass, and where the short stubble
had not been ploughed, the weeds hid it. So that there was no place
which was not more or less green; the footpaths were the greenest of
all, for such is the nature of grass where it has once been trodden on,
and by-and-by, as the summer came on, the former roads were thinly
covered with the grass that had spread out from the margin.

In the autumn, as the meadows were not mown, the grass withered as it
stood, falling this way and that, as the wind had blown it; the seeds
dropped, and the bennets became a greyish-white, or, where the docks and
sorrel were thick, a brownish-red. The wheat, after it had ripened,
there being no one to reap it, also remained standing, and was eaten by
clouds of sparrows, rooks, and pigeons, which flocked to it and were
undisturbed, feasting at their pleasure. As the winter came on, the
crops were beaten down by the storms, soaked with rain, and trodden upon
by herds of animals.

Next summer the prostrate straw of the preceding year was concealed by
the young green wheat and barley that sprang up from the grain sown by
dropping from the ears, and by quantities of docks, thistles, oxeye
daisies, and similar plants. This matted mass grew up through the
bleached straw. Charlock, too, hid the rotting roots in the fields under
a blaze of yellow flower. The young spring meadow-grass could scarcely
push its way up through the long dead grass and bennets of the year
previous, but docks and thistles, sorrel, wild carrots, and nettles,
found no such difficulty.

Footpaths were concealed by the second year, but roads could be traced,
though as green as the sward, and were still the best for walking,
because the tangled wheat and weeds, and, in the meadows, the long
grass, caught the feet of those who tried to pass through. Year by year
the original crops of wheat, barley, oats, and beans asserted their
presence by shooting up, but in gradually diminished force, as nettles
and coarser plants, such as the wild parsnips, spread out into the
fields from the ditches and choked them.

Aquatic grasses from the furrows and water-carriers extended in the
meadows, and, with the rushes, helped to destroy or take the place of
the former sweet herbage. Meanwhile, the brambles, which grew very fast,
had pushed forward their prickly runners farther and farther from the
hedges till they had now reached ten or fifteen yards. The briars had
followed, and the hedges h