Snails, Wild Strawberries, and a Nodding Owl
QQUDDENLY the rain ceased, larks flew up out. of the clover, and the wind, that had been blowing in from the sea all the grey July afternoon, fell to a faint musical harping in the elm-tops, then seemed to die out altogether. The clouds broke up and drifted towards Europe with their wintry shadow, till all the apple-orchards and hop- gardens lining the Pilgrims' Way began to gleam and sparkle through a shimmer of sunlight, and the poplars stood up like tall isolated spires, edged with gold. A colony of striped snails, winking with rain-drops and moving steadfastly uphill, caught my eye in the grass some way ahead--they were as bright as diamonds—and a burnet moth, grey and crimson, stumbled soaking out of the grasses and lit on my shoe. From then on I became involved in a series of small but startling encounters with the wild life of that Kentish hillside, with bird and flower and insect, until the sun went down.. In this strangely enchanted hour of dews and rainbows all Nature seemed to combine to bring variety and un- familiar beauties into • a world that hitherto—or was it only a change in one's own mood ?—had been much as one was accustomed to find it, neither intolerably lovely nor more than ordinarily dull.
It was as though the incarnation of Wonder itself had suddenly come flying from over far hills, and an evening walk that had started so prosaically all at once became an adventurous journey through a bright and unknown land.
The snails provided the first little entertainment. In the ordinary way one does not fall in with a colony of snails trekking purposefully across a hilltop ; or, at any rate, one does not notice them particularly : but these snails seemed, for the time being, to dominate the land- scape. They marched in companies of hundreds. As I walked it was impossible to avoid crunching their veined shells underfoot. What a heaven-sent supper-table for the blackbirds and thrushes ! But the birds were all in the woods, making music there. So I left the snails to go on with their striped houses Londonwards, and went downhill to the rustling shadowed edge of the trees. • On the way down there I passed through, and almost trampled on before I realized how elfin-like a thing it was, a wild garden of bee orchis plants—those triple-winged insect-flowers—all glittering in the evening light, mauve and dark velvet, airy, and delicate as the bees themselves. Who would not have thought it worth while climbing the hill to see this exquisite floral dance alone, in the light breeze and level rays of the sun ?
The high green palisade of the wood was lapped by a still-rising tide of dog-roses, the very colour of sun-foam. Where a bay had formed found a passage through into the hollow dimness under a thick roof of interlaced beech- boughs, but before I had time even to think which way I would go I was arrested by a flicker of wings and a sharp " kwip ! kwip ! " of anger from overhead. I looked up and there he was, bobbing at me from a branch like one of those nid-nodding figures you see on pavements in the Strand—a Little Owl. I had heard of Little Owls behaving in this way, but had never previously been the victim myself. What a rage he was in ! He shouted, he dipped his head, flapped his wings, it almost seemed to me as though he stamped his feet on the branch. He ordered me out of the wood—indeed, he saw me out of it, flitting ferociously from tree to tree until I came to the far side. here I waved good-bye to him and stepped out on to the very verge of a carpet of wild strawberries growing in close formation, in a triangular patch at the corner of a field of corn.
Is there any fruit so honey-sweet as these wildings are, I wonder ? I began to browse on them, feeling a certain kinship with the speckled thrush and the butterflies as I did so. But my browsing was soon over. The hare interrupted me.
He came loping up the outside furrow of the field as un- concernedly as though he were a cat. He was as silent as a ghost, furtive, but hares can be extraordinarily blind when they are thinking about cornfields, and this one had no idea that anyone of such diabolical repute as a man was watching him. He sat up within ten yards of me, seemed to ponder the Einstein Theory or something equally far-reaching for a few moments, and then went thoughtfully in among the corn and red poppies. " May you find the young wheat succulent, brown hare," I said, " for I shall not interfere with your evening meal, that's certain."
As I walked back along the edge of the wood three golden-crested wrens accompanied me, darting and -flickering like star-beams in and out among the under- brush. Why three Olden-crested wrens together and not a pair ? But that was only one trivial incident in a landscape where nothing was commonplace. As the Otford bells sent their chimes ringing faintly over the hillside rose-gardens, the misty air of twilight softened and transmuted that age-old music till one felt that one was listening to nothing less melodious than the Chevalier Denyn's high-belfried carillon at Malines itself.
HAJIISII MACLAREN.
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