these? Some growing thus, high in the air, on stone, and in the chinks of
the tower, suspended in dry air and sunshine; some low down under the
arch of the bridge over the brook, out of sight utterly, unless you stoop
by the brink of the water and project yourself forward to examine under.
The kingfisher sees them as he shoots through the barrel of the culvert.
There the sun direct never shines upon them, but the sunlight thrown up
by the ripples runs all day in bright bars along the vault of the arch,
playing on them. The stream arranges the sand in the shallow in bars,
minute fixed undulations; the stream arranges the sunshine in successive
flashes, undulating as if the sun, drowsy in the heat, were idly closing
and unclosing his eyelids for sleep.

Plants everywhere, hiding behind every tree, under the leaves, in the
shady places, behind the dry furrows of the field; they are only just
behind something, hidden openly. The instant you look for them they
multiply a hundredfold; if you sit on the beach and begin to count the
pebbles by you, their number instantly increases to infinity by virtue of
that conscious act.

The bird's-foot lotus was the first. The boy must have seen it, must have
trodden on it in the bare woodland pastures, certainly run about on it,
with wet naked feet from the bathing; but the boy was not conscious of
it. This was the first, when the desire came to identify and to know,
fixing upon it by means of a pale and feeble picture. In the largest
pasture there were different soils and climates; it was so large it
seemed a little country of itself then--the more so because the ground
rose and fell, making a ridge to divide the view and enlarge by
uncertainty. The high sandy soil on the ridge where the rabbits had their
warren; the rocky soil of the quarry; the long grass by the elms where
the rooks built, under whose nests there were vast unpalatable