Now, as the days roll on, the blue succory and the scarlet poppies stand side by side in the yellow wheat but just outside my Cuckoo-fields, and one or two stray corncockles bloom; they are not common here and are perhaps brought from a distance.

Here you may walk many miles and even wait several harvests to see a corncockle.
The thistledown floats; and see, yonder the white balls are rolling before the gentle air along the very tips of the bronzing wheat-ears.
By the hedge the straggling stalks of St.John's wort lift the yellow petals dotted with black specks above the bunches of grass.

The leaves, held up to the light, seem to have numerous eyelets, as if pricked but not quite through--windows in the leaf.

In the grass the short selfheal shows; and, leaning over the gate, on the edge of the wheat you may see the curious prickly seed-vessels of the corn buttercup--the 'hedgehog'-- whose spines, however, will not scratch the softest skin.
Resting on the rail under the hawthorn for a minute or two in early spring, when it was too chilly to stay long, I watched a flock of rooks and jackdaws soaring in the sky.

Round and round and ever upwards they circled, the jackdaws of course betraying their presence by their call; up towards the blue, as if in the joy of their hearts, they held a festival, happy in the genial weather and the approach of the nesting-time.