At night is their time of journeying, when they come down from the lake or return to it, uttering a weird cry in the darkened atmosphere. By day, as they swim to and fro in the flags and through the duckweed, shaded from the hot sun under willow and aspen, they call to each other, not unpleasantly, a note something like `croog,' with a twirl of the `r.' In summer they do not move far from the place they have chosen to breed in: in the frosts of winter they work their way up the brooks, or fly at night, but usually come back to the old spot. The dabchick, a slender bird, haunts the pond here too, diving even more quickly than the moorhen. Nut-tree bushes grow along the bank of the brook on this side--the nuts are a smaller sort than usual; and beside the wet ditch within the mound and on the `shore,' wherever the scythe has not reached, the meadow-sweet rears its pale flowers. At evening, if it be sultry, and on some days, especially before a thunderstorm, the whole mead is full of the fragrance of this plant, which lines the inside ditch almost everywhere. So heavy and powerful is its odour that the still motionless air between the thick hedges becomes oppressive, and it is a relief to issue forth into the open fields away from the perfume and the brooding heat. But by day it is pleasant to linger in the shadow and inhale its sweetness--if you are not nervous of snakes, for there is one here and there in the grass gliding away at the jar of the earth under your footstep. Warmth and moisture favour their increase, as on a larger scale in tropic lands; and parts of the mead are often under water when a freshet comes down the brooks so choked with flags that they cannot carry it away quickly. The osier-bed in the angle where the brooks join is on slightly higher ground, for although the withy likes water at its roots it should not stand in it. Springing across the ditch, and entering among the tall slender wands, which, though they look so thick part aside easily, you may find on the mound behind the butt of an oak sawn just above the ground; and there, in the shade of the reeds, and with a cool breeze now and again coming along the course of the stream, it is delicious in the heat of summer to repose and listen to the murmur of the water.