The sweet grass was wet with dew as I walked through a meadow in Somerset to the river. The cuckoo sang, the pleasanter perhaps because his brief time was nearly over, and all pleasant things seem to have a deeper note as they draw towards an end. Dew and sweet green grass were the more beautiful because of the knowledge that the high hills around were covered by sun-dried, wiry heather. River-side mead, dew-laden grass, and sparkling stream were like an oasis in the dry desert. They refreshed the heart to look upon as water refreshes the weary. The shadows were more marked and defined than they are as day advances, the hues of the flowers brighter, for the dew was to shadow and flower as if the colours of the artist were not yet dry. Humblebees went down with caution into the long grass, not liking to wet their wings. Butterflies and the brilliant moths of a hot summer's morn alight on a dry heated footpath till the dew is gone. A great rock rising from the grass by the river's edge alone looked arid, and its surface already heated, yet it also cast a cool shadow. By a copse, two rabbits--the latest up of all those which had sported during the night--stayed till I came near, and then quietly moved in among the ferns and foxgloves. In the narrowest part of the wood between the hedge and the river a corncrake called his loudest "crake, crake," incessantly. The cornncrake or landrail is difficult even to see, so closely does he conceal himself in the tall grasses, and his call echoed and re-echoed deceives those who try to find him. Yet by great patience and watchful skilfulness the corncrake is sometimes caught by hand. If tracked, and if you can see him--the most difficult part--you can put your hand on him. Now and then a corncrake is caught in the same way by hand while sitting on her nest on the ground. It is not, however, as easy as it reads. Walking through the grass, and thinking of the dew and the beautiful morning sunshine, I scarcely noticed the quantity of cuckoo-flowers, or cardamine, till presently it occurred to me that it was very late in the season for cuckoo-flowers and stooping I picked one, and in the act saw it was an orchis--the early purple. The meadow was coloured, or rather tinted, with the abundance of the orchis, palest of pale pink, dotted with red, the small narrow leaves sometimes with black spots. They grew in the pasture everywhere, from the river's side in the deep valley to the top of the hill by the wood.