The grasshoppers sang merrily round me as I sat on the sward; the warm sun and cloudless sky and the dry turf pleased them. Though cloudless, the wind rendered the warmth pleasant, so that the sunbeams, from which there was no shade, were not oppressive. The grasshoppers sang, the wind swept through the grass and swung the harebells, the "drowsy hum" of the threshing engine rose up from the plain; the low slumberous melody of harvest time floated in the air. An hour had gone by imperceptibly before I descended the slope to Clematis Lane. Out in the stubble where the wheat had just been cut, down amongst the dry short stalks of straw, were the light-blue petals of the grey field veronica. Almost the very first of field flowers in the earliest days of spring, when the rain drives over the furrow, and hail may hap at any time, here it was blooming again in the midst of the harvest. Two scenes could scarcely be more dissimilar than the wet and stormy hours of the early year, and the dry, hot time of harvest; the pale blue veronica, with one white petal, flourished in both, true and faithful. The gates beside the lane were not gates at all, but double draw-bars framed together, so that the gate did not open on a hinge, but had to be drawn out of the mortices. Looking over one of these grey and lichened draw-bars in a hazel hedge there were the shocks of wheat standing within the field, and on them a flock of rooks helping themselves freely. Lower in the valley, where there was water, the tall willow-herbs stood up high as the hedges. On the banks of a pool water-plantains had sent up stalks a yard high, branched, and each branch bearing its three-petalled flower. In a copse near the stems of cow-parsnip stood quite seven feet, drawn up by the willow bushes--these great plants are some of the largest that grow in the country. Goatsbeard grew by the wayside; it is like the dandelion, but has dark spots in the centre of the disc, and the flower shuts at noon. The wild carrots were forming their "birds' nests"--so soon as the flowering is over the umbel closes into the shape of a cup or bird's nest. The flower of the wild carrot is white; it is made up of numerous small separate florets on an umbel, and in the centre of these tiny florets is a deep crimson one. Getting down towards the sea and the houses now I found a shrub of henbane by the dusty road, dusty itself, grey-green, and draggled; I call it a shrub, though a plant because of its shrub-like look. The flowers were over--they are a peculiar colour, dark and green veined and red, there is no exact term for it, but you may know the plant by the leaves, which, if crushed, smell like those of the black currant. This is one of the old English medicinal plants still in use. The figs were ripening fast in an orchard; the fig trees are frequently grown between apple trees, which shelter them, and some of the fruit was enclosed in muslin bags to protect it. The fig orchards along the coast suggest