Where the smooth brown surfaces did project mosses had lined the base, and rushes leaned over and hid the rest.
In the ditches, under the shade of the brambles, the hart's-tongue fern extended its long blade of dark glossy green.

By the decaying stoles the hardy fern flourished, under the trees on the mounds the lady fern could be found, and farther up nearer the wood the tall brake almost supplanted the bushes.

Oak and ash boughs reached across: in the ash the wood-pigeons lingered.

Every now and then the bright colours of the green woodpeckers flashed to and fro their nest in a tree hard by.

They would not have chosen it had not the place been nearly as quiet as the wood itself.
Blackthorn bushes jealously encroached on the narrow stile that entered the lane from a meadow--a mere rail thrust across a gap.