is audible, and a chiffchaff has twice passed. Afar beyond the
oaks at the top of the field dark specks ascend from time to time,
and after moving in wide circles for a while descend again to the
corn. These must be larks; but their notes are not powerful enough
to reach me, though they would were it not for the song in the
hedges, the hum of innumerable insects, and the ceaseless "crake,
crake" of landrails. There are at least two landrails in the
mowing-grass; one of them just now seemed coming straight towards
the apple tree, and I expected in a minute to see the grass move,
when the bird turned aside and entered the tufts and wild parsley
by the hedge. Thence the call has come without a moment's pause,
"crake, crake," till the thick hedge seems filled with it. Tits
have visited the apple tree over my head, a wren has sung in the
willow, or rather on a dead branch projecting lower down than the
leafy boughs, and a robin across under the elms in the opposite
hedge. Elms are a favourite tree of robins - not the upper
branches, but those that grow down the trunk, and are the first to
have leaves in spring.

The yellowhammer is the most persistent individually, but I think
the blackbirds when listened to are the masters of the fields.
Before one can finish, another begins, like the summer ripples
succeeding behind each other, so that the melodious sound merely
changes its position. Now here, now in the corner, then across the
field, again in the distant copse, where it seems about to sink,
when it rises again almost at hand. Like a great human artist, the
blackbird makes no effort, being fully conscious that his liquid
tone cannot be matched. He utters a few delicious notes, and
carelessly quits the green stage of the oak till it pleases him to
sing again. Without the blackbird, in whose throat the sweetness