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Besides the loss caused by percolation, some fine earth is certainly washed down the sloping grass-covered surfaces of our Downs. The washing-down process, however, will be checked in the course of time; for although I do not know how thin a layer of mould suffices to support worms, yet a limit must at last be reached; and then their castings would cease to be ejected or would become scanty.

Soon he came to one of those open, beautiful, grass-covered "rides" with which keepers intersect pheasant-coverts. He stopped dead on the edge of it, himself invisible among the drooping, leaning, old-gold bracken. The "ride" was full of wood-people, for here had been scattered that corn which Gaiters intended the pheasants to feed upon.

Our minds were still troubled about the spot toward which we ought to journey next day, and we needed the soothing influences of Nature. The country to the north and west of our little farm was very beautiful. About half a mile from the house a modest river ran; on each side of it were grass-covered fields and hills, and in some places there were extensive tracks of woodlands.

You will find the reedbuck in the tall reeds and bulrushes of the swamps and low places, where he finds good cover and good feeding; and also you will find him along the low, undulating, grass-covered hills near his water supply. In the heat of the day they are up in the tall grass, where they remain until along in the afternoon.

The valleys are worn by the streams, and, in turn, are built up, leveled, and enriched by the sand and alluvium deposited annually by the floods. They are generally open, grass-covered areas, though some have become densely forested since being left above the high water of the streams. The broad valley of the Rio Grande de Cagayan is not occupied by the Igorot.

But persons who have lived in the island, or who have visited the ports of its northern or southern shores, or crossed the Atlantic by any of the ocean steamers which sail daily from the United Kingdom, must have arrived at a conclusion totally at variance with these writers; for assuredly there is no nation under the sun which manufactures the material called man so readily as does that grass-covered island.

Another horseback rider was moving across the prairie toward her, and the girl smiled when she saw him and stopped to watch his calico pony lope unevenly across the grass-covered slope. The pony was prone to drop into a rough trot at short intervals, and at such times was urged to renewed efforts by a dig of its rider's heels in the under regions of its stunted body.

One day I was walking along the grassy borders of a beech and maple wood with a friend when, as we came to a little low mound of moss and grass, scarcely a foot high, I said, "This is just the spot for a junco's nest," and as I stooped down to examine it, out flew the bird. I had divined better than I knew. What a pretty secret that little footstool of moss and grass-covered earth held!

And in consequence the jet-plane was ordered to change course and head west. After many hours the transport landed. A hillside rose before it. A vast, grass-covered area lifted up. It was a great door. The transport rolled deliberately into a monstrous, windowless, artificial cavern, and the hillside closed behind it. This was a base, too, but not like the one at Gissell Bay.

Such was the siren song that lured me to a certain nook on the side of the highest mountain in Massachusetts one June. The country was gloriously green and fresh and young, as if it had just been created. The heavy forests which covered the hills ended in steep grass-covered slopes, with dashing and hurrying mountain brooks between, and, save the road, scarcely a trace of man was seen.