Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/135

Rh Nurseries and plantations had come into being, but here and there a patch of bilberry or a clump of ling clung tenaciously to the edge of a ditch. Sidings from the main lines wandered, apparently aimlessly, into ploughed fields; but at the end of these tracks were piles of topdressing, including tins and pots, old boots, and all the flotsam and jetsam of Manchester's ever-flowing human tide. Acres and acres were under cultivation, but where clearing Was still in process big pools of shallow water, not overclean, were the feeding-ground of the black headed gull, which had discovered that Shudehill's fishy refuse was palatable if ancient.

We were musing over the past history oi an umbrella handle, that lay amongst the cinders, the metal of the permanent way, when the sun broke through the clouds. Immediately every field, ploughed or harrowed, flashed out innumerable heliographic signals; the brown, peaty earth was thick with scintillating diamonds, for there is beauty even in the broken glass of countless discarded bottles.

The farm had come to stay; the land was tilled. Low but thick quickset hedges, adorned with the fragrant May, lined the old drainage ditches. The main railway lines remained, but the branches, the sidings, where they had not been removed, were rusted and disused, lost in fields of thick and healthy grass. Manchester refuse had fulfilled its promise, had proved fruitful; save for the level chessboard of fields there was little difference between the Moss and the surrounding country. The corn bunting was no longer in evidence, but the starling, thrush, and blackbird worked the ground for grubs and worms which never appeared amongst the heather; linnets nested in the hedgerows, and the partridge called where once the red