Nature Near London: A Classic Work of Essays on the Countryside and Natural History in the London Area a Century Ago [Facsimile] [Hardcover]

Richard Jefferies (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1980

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FLOCKS OF BIRDS. A Cektain road leading outwards from a suburb, enters at once among fields. It soon passes a thick hedge dividing a meadow from a cornfield, in which hedge is a spot where some bluebells may be found in spring. Wild flowers are best seen when in masses, a few scattered along a bank much concealed by grass and foliage are lost, except indeed, upon those who love them for their own sake. This meadow in June, for instance, when the butter-cups are high, is one broad expanse of burnished gold. The most careless passer-by can hardly fail to cast a glance over acres of rich yellow. The furze, again, especially after a shower has refreshed its tint, must be seen by all. Where broom grows thickly, lifting its colour well into view, or where the bird's-foot lotus in full summer overruns the thin grass of some upland pasture, the eye cannot choose but acknowledge it. So, too, with charlock, and with hill sides purple with heath, or where the woodlands are azure with bluebells for a hundred yards together. Learning from this, those who would transplant wild flowers to their garden should arrangeto have as many as possible of the same species close together. The blue bells in this hedge are unseen, except by the rabbits. The latter have a large burrow, and until the grass is too tall, or after it is cut or grazed, can be watched from the highway. In this hedge the first nightingale of the year sings, beginning some two or three days before the bird which comes to the bushes in the gorse, which will presently be mentioned. It is, or rather was, a favourite meadow with the partridges; one summer there was, I think, a nest in or near it, for I saw the birds there daily. But the next year they were absent. One afternoon a brace of partridges came over the hedge within...

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 242 pages
• Publisher: John Clare Books; Facsimile edition edition (July 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0906549159
• ISBN-13: 978-0906549155
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds

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