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 had widened to three or four times their first
breadth, the fields being equally contracted. Starting from all sides at
once, these brambles and briars in the course of about twenty years met
in the centre of the largest fields.

Hawthorn bushes sprang up among them, and, protected by the briars and
thorns from grazing animals, the suckers of elm-trees rose and
flourished. Sapling ashes, oaks, sycamores, and horse-chestnuts, lifted
their heads. Of old time the cattle would have eaten off the seed leaves
with the grass so soon as they were out of the ground, but now most of
the acorns that were dropped by birds, and the keys that were wafted by
the wind, twirling as they floated, took root and grew into trees. By
this time the brambles and briars had choked up and blocked the former
roads, which were as impassable as the fields.

No fields, indeed, remained, for where the ground was dry, the thorns,
briars, brambles, and saplings already mentioned filled the space, and
these thickets and the young trees had converted most part of the
country into an immense forest. Where the ground was naturally moist,
and the drains had become choked with willow roots, which, when confined
in tubes, grow into a mass like the brush of a fox, sedges and flags and
rushes covered it. Thorn bushes were there, too, but not so tall; they
were hung with lichen. Besides the flags and reeds, vast quantities of