At every vacant minute he hastened to gather furze-stumps, thorn-tree roots, and other solid materials from the adjacent slopes, hiding them from cursory view.
In many such cases, a cursory search for causes finds that some small group of people was wearing, promoting, or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention.
Here is a quote from his book: " When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning."
If you pay even the most cursory attention to it, you'll see that it changes every day; sometimes it's up in the day, sometimes at night, and its shape is always changing.