COUNTRY LIFE
EVERY hedge-bottom is thick and almosi choked with grass and the flowers of summer. Spikes of foxglove push upwards, " sticky Willie " hangs on the stems and stalks of docks and thistles, and peeping among the undergrowth is the wild strawberry, ripe and red, an attraction for the birds and the schoolboy idling on his way home. The wild strawberry, no longer than the nail of one's little finger, and often much smaller, has a sharp flavour not so acid as the sloe or the crab apple, but sour, nevertheless, as nearly all wild fruit is sour. After sampling one or. two in the course of a walk, I had enough and I was not tempted when I came upon a gooseberry gone wild and bearing berries the size of peas. How long it takes the gooseberry to deteriorate so much in size or how long the gnarled little bush goes on, I do not know. It is plain that the peopf6 who owned these degenerated bushes are themselves long dead for not only the walls of their cottages have disappeared, but the foundations are often buried in the field beyond the hedge. The crop of little yellow berries feeds the birds. Not even the children bother to pick them.
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