Summer Studies of Birds and Books Author:William Warde Fowler General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1895 Original Publisher: Macmillan Subjects: Birds Natural history Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to M... more »illion-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III AMONG THE BIRDS IN WALES In the flat meadows of the midlands, with their deep alluvial soil, there is a certain lush richness of vegetation iu June which makes the air heavy and languid. Unless the weather chances to be unusually dry and bright, as it was in the June of last year, you cannot push through even a few yards of that dense herbage without feeling the moisture that lurks in the depths of it; the same moisture that becomes visible, when the sun goes down, in a white film of vapour which rises ghost-like in the dusk, and covers the meadow like a sheet, ending exactly where the hedge divides the upward-sloping pasture - field from the growing hay of the flat ground. It is at this time, before the hay is cut and the clamp of the grass-roots is exposed and dried, at the very time when the flowers are most brilliant, and the gently-flowing water of our streams lingers lazily about the yellow flags and blue geraniums thatfringe the banks -- it is in the very height of the glory of midland verdure that I always feel a strong desire after light air and short grass. To mount to some height overlooking the plain, where in an old quarry the rock has been overgrown with thyme, or where on the broad strips of grass that border the road some remnants are still left of the old flora of the down-land, is to me at this time always a delight and a relief. Should there chance to be a corner where a few tufts of heather still linger among the furze-bushes, and where perhaps a little copse of pines varies the almost wearisome landscape ...« less