hedges.

There were plenty in the double-mounds to which we had access; but the
shepherd, who had learned his craft on the Downs, said that the nuts
grew there in such immense quantities as determined us to see them.
Sitting on the felled ash under the shade of the hawthorn hedge, where
the butcher-birds every year used to stick the humble-bees on the
thorns, he described the route--a mere waggon track--and the situation
of the largest copses.

The waggon track we found crossed the elevated plains close under and
between the Downs, following at the foot, as it seemed, for an endless
distance the curve of a range. The slope bounded the track on one side:
on the other it was enclosed by a low bank covered with dead thorn
thickly entangled, which enclosed the cornfields. The space between the
hedge and the hill was as far as we could throw one of the bleached
flints lying on the sward. It was dotted with hawthorn trees and furze,
and full of dry brown grass. A few scattered firs, the remnants of
extinct plantations, grew on the slope, and green 'fairy rings' marked
it here and there.

These fairy rings have a somewhat different appearance from the dark
green semicircles found in the meadows and called by the same name: the
latter are often only segments of circles, are found near hedges, and
almost always either under a tree or where a tree has been. There were
more mushrooms on the side of the hill than we cared to carry. Some eat
mushrooms raw--fresh as taken from the ground, with a little salt: to me
the taste is then too strong. Of the many ways of cooking them the
simplest is the best; that is, on a gridiron over wood embers on the
hearth.