in the bunches and by the hidden footpath. Like clubs from
Polynesia the tips of the grasses are varied in shape: some tend to
a point - the foxtails - some are hard and cylindrical; others,
avoiding the club shape, put forth the slenderest branches with
fruit of seed at the ends, which tremble as the air goes by. Their
stalks are ripening and becoming of the colour of hay while yet the
long blades remain green.

Each kind is repeated a hundred times, the foxtails are succeeded
by foxtails, the narrow blades by narrow blades, but never become
monotonous; sorrel stands by sorrel, daisy flowers by daisy. This
bed of veronica at the foot of the ancient apple has a whole
handful of flowers, and yet they do not weary the eye. Oak follows
oak and elm ranks with elm, but the woodlands are pleasant; however
many times reduplicated, their beauty only increases. So, too, the
summer days; the sun rises on the same grasses and green hedges,
there is the same blue sky, but did we ever have enough of them?
No, not in a hundred years! There seems always a depth, somewhere,
unexplored, a thicket that has not been seen through, a corner full
of ferns, a quaint old hollow tree, which may give us something.
Bees go by me as I stand under the apple, but they pass on for the
most part bound on a long journey, across to the clover fields or
up to the thyme lands; only a few go down into the mowing-grass.
The hive bees are the most impatient of insects; they cannot bear
to entangle their wings beating against grasses or boughs. Not one
will enter a hedge. They like an open and level surface, places
cropped by sheep, the sward by the roadside, fields of clover,
where the flower is not deep under grass.