farther like the reflection of sunlight on water, but the surface was
really much the same colour everywhere. It seemed a triumph of culture
over such a space, such regularity, such perfection of myriads of plants
springing in their true lines at the same time, each particular ear
perfect, and a mile of it. Perfect work with the plough, the drill, the
harrow in every detail, and yet such breadth. Let your hand touch the
ears lightly as you walk--drawn through them as if over the side of a
boat in water--feeling the golden heads. The sparrows fly out every now
and then ahead; some of the birds like their corn as it hardens, and some
while it is soft and full of milky sap. There are hares within, and many
a brood of partridge chicks that cannot yet use their wings. Thick as the
seed itself the feathered creatures have been among the wheat since it
was sown. Finches more numerous than the berries on the hedges; sparrows
like the finches multiplied by finches, linnets, rooks, like leaves on
the trees, wood-pigeons whose crops are like bushel baskets for capacity;
and now as it ripens the multitude will be multiplied by legions, and as
it comes to the harvest there is a fresh crop of sparrows from the nests
in the barns, you may see a brown cloud of them a hundred yards long.
Besides which there were the rabbits that ate the young green blades, and
the mice that will be busy in the sheaves, and the insects from
spring-time to granary, a nameless host uncounted. A whole world, as it
were, let loose upon the wheat, to eat, consume, and wither it, and yet
it conquers the whole world. The great field you see was filled with gold
corn four feet deep as a pitcher is filled with water to the brim. Of
yore the rich man is said, in the Roman classic, to have measured his
money, so here you might have measured it by the rood. The sunbeams sank
deeper and deeper into the wheatears, layer upon layer of light, and the
colour deepened by these daily strokes. There was no bulletin to tell the
folk of its progress, no Nileometer to mark the rising flood of the wheat
to its hour of overflow. Yet there went through the village a sense of