continually circulate, calling as they fly.

One morning in May, while resting on a rail in the copse, I heard four
calling close by, the furthest not a hundred yards distant, and as they
continually changed their positions flying round there was always one in
sight. They circled round, singing; the instant one ceased another took
it up, a perfect madrigal. In the evening, at eight o'clock, I found
them there again, still singing. The same detached groups of trees are
much frequented by wood-pigeons, especially towards autumn.

Rooks prefer to perch on the highest branches, wood-pigeons more in the
body of the tree, and when the boughs are bare of leaves a flock of the
latter may be recognised in this way as far as the eye can see, and when
the difference of colour is rendered imperceptible by distance. The
wood-pigeon when perched has a rounded appearance; the rook a longer and
sharper outline.

By one corner of the copse there is an oak, hollow within, but still
green and flourishing. The hollow is black and charred; some mischievous
boys must have lighted a fire inside it, just as the ploughboys do in
the far away country. A little pond in the meadow close by is so
overhung by another oak, and so surrounded with bramble and hawthorn,
that the water lies in perpetual shade. It is just the spot where, if
rabbits were about, one might be found sitting out on the bank under the
brambles. This overhanging oak was broken by the famous October snow,
1880, further splintered by the gales of the next year, and its trunk is
now split from top to bottom as if with wedges.

These meadows in spring are full of cowslips, and in one part the
meadow-orchis flourishes. The method of making cowslip balls is