In mythology the goddess of spring returned to the bleak woodlands and barren fields, scattering life and song as she wandered. Nowadays we do not believe in pagan deities, but the idea survives, like poetry, for ever. That _something_ has returned to this wild and lovely land by the sea there can be no doubt. In every dry ditch the nettles are springing up, and the white blossom already crests some of the clusters. The spade-shaped leaves of the celandine--a flower that usually comes in February or March, and resembles a buttercup--are among the grasses in the meadows, the cuckoo-plants are rising, a lark has two eggs in her nest, while her mate sings with vernal ecstasy high above. The hedge-banks are refreshed with young seedling plants, dandelions, hawk-weeds, speedwell, thistles, lords-and-ladies, and a score of others. I know a damp patch by the roadway where every spring giant docks grow. In July their immense leaves, three feet long, turn crimson and brown; in August tall spires of rusty seeds are prepared, and the stalks stand next spring. This year, however, the seeds were dropped in June. Now the plants are putting forth fresh leaves that over-shadow the tiny efforts of their off-sprung life. Those docks have been there a generation, and are still unwearied--they must have launched millions of seeds into the light. The swallows are still singing, but the chill nights are a sign to them. Yesterday a young bird flew full-tilt into the wall of a barn, and was picked up dead. It was blind, and had been so since birth. How had it existed till now? I am inclined to think that it had lost its parents, who hitherto must have been shepherding it. Or perhaps it had seen the goddess Proserpine come back into the September days of gold and royalest blue, and had paid the penalty of vision. I burnt the tiny corpse on a bramble-fire; its ashes went up in smoke and spark towards the sun. CUCKOO NOTES Most people know that the “cuckoo lays its eggs in another bird’s nest.” The few will say that the cuckoo does nothing of the sort, that she will lay her egg on the ground somewhere, and then carry it either by beak or foot to the selected nest, deposit it there, and fly away. They will say (once I said the same thing) that “it never actually lays in another nest.” They are wrong, in one case, at any rate. This spring a hedge-sparrow built its nest in the rough edge of a pile of faggots. In the course of time four pale blue eggs appeared, and one morning very early a large bird flew down to it. She must have remained there for some time, for as I strolled past when the sun was just rising above the hills she flew off the nest. I knew by the flight that the bird was a cuckoo. Below the pile of faggots, on the ground, lay the scattered remains of the eggs, and the cuckoo, before _laying_ her solitary egg in the nest, had apparently sucked all four of them.