Wild Life in a Southern County

Once now and then in the cycle of the years there comes a summer which to the hills is almost like a fever to the blood, wasting and drying up with its heat the green things upo...

A low thick hawthorn hedge runs along some distance below the earthwork just at the foot of the steepest part of the hill. It divides the greensward of the down from the ploughe...

The stream, after leaving the village and the washpool, rushes swiftly down the descending slope, and then entering the meadows, quickly loses its original impetuous character....

Broad green paths, wide enough for three or four to walk abreast, lead from the garden at Wick into the orchard. On the side next the meadows the orchard is enclosed by a hawtho...

A short distance below the cottagers' `dipping-place' just mentioned, the same stream, leaving the deep groove or gully, widens suddenly into a large clear pool, shaded by two t...

Wick farmhouse is thatched, and has many gables hidden with ivy. In these broad expanses of thatch, on the great `chimney-tuns' as country folk call them, and in the ivy, tribes...

The farmhouse at Wick has the gardens and orchard already mentioned upon one side, and on the other are the carthouses, sheds, and rickyard. Between these latter and the dwellin...

There are few hedges so thick but that in January it is possible to see through them, frost and wind having brought down the leaves. The nettles, however, and coarse grasses, dr...

There are three kinds of snakes, according to the cottage people-- namely, water snakes, grass snakes, and black snakes. The first frequent the brooks, ponds, and withy-beds; th...

In most large rural parishes there is at least one small hamlet a mile or two distant from the main village. A few houses and cottages stand loosely scattered about the fields,...

A place where the bank of the brook has been dug away so as to form a sloping approach to the water, in order that cattle may drink without difficulty, is much visited by birds...

The nightingale is one of the birds whose habit of returning every year to the same spot can hardly be overlooked by anyone. Hawthorn and hazel are supposed to attract them: I d...

The `summer snipe,' or sandpiper, comes to the lake regularly year after year, and remains during the warm months. About a dozen visit the shallow sandy reaches running along th...

A wicket-gate affords a private entrance from the orchard into the home-field, opening on the meadow close to the great hedge, the favourite highway of the birds. Tracing this h...

The city built by the rooks in the elms of the great pasture field (the Warren, near Wick farmhouse) is divided into two main parts; the trees standing in two rows, separated by...

Some few farmhouses, with cow-yards and rickyards attached, are planted in the midst of the village; and these have cottages occupied by the shepherds and carters, or other labo...

A gap in the hedge by Hazel Corner leads through a fringe of hawthorn bushes into the ash copse. There is a gate at a little distance; but somehow it is always more pleasant to...

Under the trunks of the great trees the hedges are usually thinner, and need repairing frequently; and so it happens that at the top of the home-field, besides the gap leading i...

The most commanding down is crowned with the grassy mound and trenches of an ancient earthwork, from whence there is a noble view of hill and plain. The inner slope of the green...

As evening approaches, and the rooks begin to wing their way homewards, sometimes a great number of them will alight upon the steep ascent close under the entrenchment on the do...