In the early spring, when the night is bright and clear, it is a place to stand a moment and muse awhile. For the copse is dark and gloomy, the bare oaks are dark behind; the eye cannot see across the prairie, whose breadth is doubled by the night. But yonder lies a great grey sarsen boulder, like an uncouth beast of ancient days crouching in the hollow. Hush! there was a slight rustling in the grass there, as of a frightened thing; it was a startled hare hastening away. The brightest constellations of our latitude pour down their rays and influence on the birth of bud and leaf in spring; and at no other season is the sky so gorgeous with stars. The grass in the meadow or home-field as it begins to grow tall in spring is soon visited by the corncrakes, who take up their residence there. In this district (though called the corncrake) these birds seem to frequent the mowing grass more than the arable fields, and they generally arrive about the time when it has grown sufficiently high and thick to hide their motions. This desire of concealment--to be out of sight--is apparently more strongly marked in them than in any other bird; yet they utter their loud call of `Crake, crake, crake!' not unlike the turning of a wooden rattle, continuously though only at a short distance. It is difficult to tell from what place the cry proceeds: at one moment it sounds almost close at hand, the next fifty yards off; then, after a brief silence, a long way to one side or the other. The attempt to mark the spot is in vain; you think you have it, and rush there, but nothing is to be seen, and a minute afterwards `Crake, crake!' comes behind you. For the first two or three such attempts the crake seems to move but a little way, dodging to and fro in a zigzag, so that his call is never very far off; but if repeated again and again he gets alarmed, there is a silence, and presently you hear him in a corner of the mead a hundred yards distant. Perhaps once, if you steal up very, very quietly, and suddenly dart forward, or if you have been waiting till he has come unawares close to you, you may possibly see the grass move as if something passed through it; but in a moment he is gone, without a glimpse of his body having been seen. His speed must be very great to slip like this from one side of the field to the other in so few seconds.