The Life of the Fields by Jefferies, Richard, 1848-1887

The daylight has lingered on longer than expected, but now the gloom of the short January evening is settling down fast in the wood. The silent and motionless trees rise out of a mysterious shadow, which fills up the spaces between their trunks. Only above, where their delicate outer branches are shown against the dark sky, is there any separation between them. Somewhere in the deep shadow of the underwood a blackbird calls "ching, ching" before he finally settles himself to roost. In the yew the lesser birds are already quiet, sheltered by the evergreen spray; they have also sought the ivy-grown trunks. "Twit, twit," sounds high overhead as one or two belated little creatures, scarcely visible, pass quickly for the cover of the furze on the hill. The short January evening is of but a few minutes' duration; just now it was only dusky, and already the interior of the wood is impenetrable to the glance. There rises a loud though distant clamour of rooks and daws, who have restlessly moved in their roost-trees. Darkness is almost on them, yet they cannot quite settle. The cawing and dawing rises to a pitch, and then declines; the wood is silent, and it is suddenly night.

BY THE EXE

The whortleberry bushes are almost as thick as the heather in places on the steep, rocky hills that overlook the Exe. Feeding on these berries when half ripe is said to make the heath poults thin (they are acid), so that a good crop of whortleberries is not advantageous to the black game. Deep in the hollow the Exe winds and bends, finding a crooked way among the ruddy rocks. Sometimes an almost inaccessible precipice rises on one shore, covered with firs and ferns, which no one can gather; while on the other is a narrow but verdant strip of mead. Coming down in flood from the moors the Exe will not wait to run round its curves, but rushes across the intervening corner, and leaves behind, as it subsides, a mass of stones, flat as slates or scales, destroying the grass. But the fly-fisherman seeks the spot because the water is swift at the angle of the stream and broken by a ledge of rock. He can throw up stream--the line falls soft as silk on the slow eddy below the rock, and the fly is drawn gently towards him across the current. When a natural fly approaches the surface of running water, and flutters along just above it, it encounters a light air, which flows in the same direction as the stream. Facing this surface breeze, the fly cannot progress straight up the river, but is carried sideways across it. This motion the artificial fly imitates; a trout takes it, and is landed on the stones. He is not half a pound, yet in the sunshine has all the beauty of a larger fish. Spots of cochineal and gold dust, finely mixed together, dot his sides; they are not red nor yellow exactly, as if gold dust were mixed with some bright red. A line is drawn along his glistening greenish side, and across this there are faintly marked lozenges of darker colour, so that in swimming past he would appear barred. There are dark spots on the head between the eyes, the tail at its lower and upper edges is pinkish; his gills are bright scarlet. Proportioned and exquisitely shaped, he looks like a living arrow, formed to shoot through the water. The delicate little creature is finished in every detail, painted to the utmost minutiae, and carries a wonderful store of force, enabling him to easily surmount the rapids.