Field and Hedgerow: Being the Last Essays of Richard JefferiesJefferies, Richard
History
Field and Hedgerow: Being the Last Essays of Richard Jefferies
Jefferies, Richard
England -- Description and travel; Natural history
their steps, as the great planks, flecked with lichen at the edges, are
not all level. The horned sheep and lambs go over it--where do they not
go? Like goats they wander everywhere.
In a cottage some way up the hill we ate clotted cream and whortleberry
jam. Through the open door came the ceaseless rush! rush! like a wind in
the wood. The floor was of concrete, lime and sand; on the open
hearth--pronounced 'airth'--sods of turf cut from the moor and oak
branches were smouldering under the chimney crook. Turf smoke from the
piled-up fires of winter had darkened the beams of the ceiling, but from
that rude room there was a view of the river, and the hill, and the oaks
in full June colour, which the rich would envy. Sometimes in early
morning the wild red deer are seen feeding on the slope opposite. As we
drove away in reckless Somerset style, along precipices above the river,
with nothing but a fringe of fern for parapet, the oak woods on the hills
under us were shading down into evening coolness of tint, the yellow less
warm, the green more to the surface. Upon the branches of the trees moss
grows, forming a level green top to the round bough like a narrow cushion
along it, with frayed edges drooping over each side. Though moss is
common on branches, it does not often make a raised cushion, thick, as if
green velvet pile were laid for the birds to run on. There were rooks'
nests in some tall ash trees; the scanty foliage left the nests exposed,
they were still occupied by late broods. Rooks' nests are not often seen
in ashes as in elms.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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