There is a frontier line to civilisation in this country yet, and not
far outside its great centres we come quickly even now on the borderland
of nature. Modern progress, except where it has exterminated them, has
scarcely touched the habits of bird or animal; so almost up to the very
houses of the metropolis the nightingale yearly returns to her former
haunts. If we go a few hours' journey only, and then step just beyond
the highway--where the steam ploughing engine has left the mark of its
wide wheels on the dust--and glance into the hedgerow, the copse, or
stream, there are nature's children as unrestrained in their wild, free
life as they were in the veritable backwoods of primitive England. So,
too, in some degree with the tillers of the soil: old manners and
customs linger, and there seems an echo of the past in the breadth of
their pronunciation.
But a difficulty confronts the explorer who would carry away a note of
what he has seen, because nature is not cut and dried to hand, nor
easily classified, each subject shading gradually into another. In
studying the ways, for instance, of so common a bird as the starling it
cannot be separated from the farmhouse in the thatch of which it often
breeds, the rooks with whom it associates, or the friendly sheep upon
whose backs it sometimes rides. Since the subjects are so closely
connected, it is best, perhaps, to take the places they prefer for the
convenience of division, and group them as far as possible in the
districts they usually frequent.
The following chapters have, therefore, been so arranged as to
correspond in some degree with the contour of the country. Commencing
at the highest spot, an ancient entrenchment on the Downs has been
chosen as the starting-place from whence to explore the uplands.
Beneath the hill a spring breaks forth, and, tracing its course
downwards, there next come the village and the hamlet. Still farther
the streamlet becomes a broad brook, flowing through meadows in the
midst of which stands a solitary farmhouse. The house itself, the
garden and orchard, are visited by various birds and animals. In the
fields immediately around--in the great hedges and the copse--are
numerous others, and an expedition is made to the forest. Returning to
the farm again as a centre, the rookery remains to be examined, and the
ways and habits of the inhabitants of the hedges. Finally come the fish
and wild-fowl of the brook and lake;--finishing in the Vale.