Just outside the rickyard, where the grass of the meadow has not been mown but fed by cattle, grow the tall buttercups, rising to the knee. The children use the long hollow stems as tubes wherewith to suck up the warm new milk through its crown of thick froth, from the oaken milking-pail. There is a fable that the buttercups make the butter yellow when they come--but the cows never eat them, being so bitter; they eat all round close up to the very stems, but leave them standing scrupulously. The children, top, make similar pipes of straw to suck up the new cider fresh from the cider-mill, as it stands in the tubs directly after the grinding. Under the shady trees of the orchard the hare's parsley flourishes, and immediately without the orchard edge, on the `shore' of the ditch, grow thick bunches of the beautiful blue crane's-bill, or wild geranium, which ought to be a garden flower and not left to the chance mercy of the scythe. There, too, the herb Robert hides, and its foliage, turning colour, lies like crimson lace on the bank. Even the tall thistles of the ditch have their beauty--the flower has a delicate tint, varying with the species from mauve to purple; the humble-bee visits every thistle-bloom in his path, and there must therefore be sweetness in it. Then in the autumn issues forth the floating thistledown, streaming through the air and rolling like an aerial ball over the tips of the bennets. Thistledown is sometimes gathered to fill pillow-cases, and a pillow so filled is exquisitely soft. There is not a nook or corner of the old place where something interesting may not be found. Even the slates on a modern addition to the homestead are each bordered with yellow lichen--perhaps because they adjoin thatch, for slates do not seem generally to encourage the growth of lichen. It appears to prefer tiles, which therefore sooner assume an antique tint. To the geraniums in the bow-window the humming-bird moth comes now and then, hovering over the scarlet petals. Out of the high elms drops a huge grey moth, so exactly the colour of grey lichen that it might be passed for it--pursued, of course, as it clumsily falls, by two or more birds eager for the spoil. It is feast-time with them when the cockchafers come: they leave nothing but wing-cases scattered on the garden paths, like the shields of slain men-at-arms.