I Touched It With My Stick, When The Pot-Handle Drew Itself Out Of Loop Shape And Slowly Disappeared Under Some Dead Furze, Showing The Blunt Tail Of A Blindworm.

I have heard people say that the red ones are venomous, but the grey harmless.

The red are spiteful, and if you see them in the road you should always kill them. It is curious that in places where blindworms are often seen their innocuous nature should not be generally known. They are even called adders sometimes. At the farm below, the rooks have been down and destroyed the tender chickens not long hatched; they do not eat the whole of the chicken, but disembowel it for food. Rooks are very wide feeders, especially at nesting-time. They are suspected of being partial to the young of partridge and pheasant, as well as to the eggs.

Looking down upon the treetops of the forest from a height, there seemed to come from day to day a hoariness in the boughs, a greyish hue, distinct from the blackness of winter. This thickened till the eye could not see into the wood; until then the trunks had been visible, but they were now shut out. The buds were coming; and presently the surface of the treetops took a dark reddish-brown tint. The larches lifted their branches, which had drooped, curving upwards as a man raises his arms above his shoulders, and the slender boughs became set with green buds. At a distance the corn is easily distinguished from the meadows beside it by the different shade of green; grass is a deep green, corn appears paler and yet brighter - perhaps the long winter has given it the least touch of yellow. Daisies are up at last - very late indeed. Big humble-bees, grey striped, enter the garden and drone round the banks, searching everywhere for a fit hole in which to begin the nest. It is pleasant to hear them; after the dreary silence the old familiar burr-rr is very welcome. Spotted orchis leaves are up, and the palm-willow bears its yellow pollen. Happily, the wild anemones will not bear the journey to London, they wither too soon; else they would probably be torn up like the violets. Neither is there any demand for the white barren strawberry blossom, or the purplish ground-ivy among the finely marked fern moss.

The rain falls; and in the copses of the valley, deep and moist, where grey lichen droops from the boughs, the thrushes sing all day - so delighted are they to have the earth soft again, and so busy with the nesting. At four o'clock in the morning the larks begin to sing: they will be half an hour earlier next month, adjusting their time nicely by the rising of the sun. They sing on till after the lamps are lit in the evening. Far back in the snow-time a pair of wagtails used to come several times a day close to the windows, their black markings showing up singularly well against the snow on the ground.

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