Hampshire Days

CHAPTER I.

Autumn in the New Forest--Red colour in mammals--November mildness--A house by the Boldre--An ideal spot for small birds--Abundance of nests--Small mammals and the weasel's part--Voles and mice--Hornet and bank-vole--Young shrews--A squirrel's visit--Green woodpecker's drumming-tree--Drumming of other species--Beauty of great spotted woodpecker--The cuckoo controversy--A cuckoo in a robin's nest--Behaviour of the cuckoo--Extreme irritability--Manner of ejecting eggs and birds from the nest--Loss of irritability--Insensibility of the parent robins--Discourse on mistaken kindness, pain and death in nature, the annual destruction of bird life, and the young cuckoo's instinct.

CHAPTER II.

Between the Boldre and the Exe--Abuse of the New Forest--Character of the population--New Forest code and conscience--A radical change foreshadowed--Tenacity of the Forest fly--Oak woods of Beaulieu--Swallow and pike--Charm of Beaulieu--Instinctive love of open spaces--A fragrant heath--Nightjars--Snipe--Redshanks--Pewits--Cause of sympathy with animals--Grasshopper and spider--A rapacious fly--Melancholy moods--Evening on the heath--"World-strangeness"--Pixie mounds--Death and burial--The dead in the barrows--Their fear of the living.

CHAPTER III.. A Favourite New Forest Haunt--Summertide--Young Blackbird's

A favourite New Forest haunt--Summertide--Young blackbird's call--Abundance of blackbirds and thrushes, and destruction of young--Starlings breeding--The good done by starlings--Perfume of the honeysuckle--Beauty of the hedge rose--Cult of the rose--Lesser whitethroat--His low song--Common and lesser whitethroat--In the woods--A sheet of bracken--Effect of broken surfaces--Roman mosaics at Silchester--Why mosaics give pleasure--Woodland birds--Sound of insect life--Abundance of flies--Sufferings of cattle--Dark Water--Biting and teasing flies--Feeding the fishes and fiddlers with flies.

CHAPTER IV.

The stag-beetle--Evening flight--Appearance on the wing--Seeking a mate--Stag and doe in a hedge--The plough-man and the beetle--A stag-beetle's fate--Concerning tenacity of life--Life appearances after death--A serpent's skin--A dead glow-worm's light--Little summer tragedies--A snaky spot--An adder's basking-place--Watching adders--The adder's senses--Adder's habits not well known--A pair of anxious pewits--A dead young pewit--Animals without knowledge of death--Removal of the dead by ants--Gould's observations on ants.

CHAPTER V.. Cessation of Song--Oak Woods Less Silent Than Others--Mixed

Cessation of song--Oak woods less silent than others--Mixed gatherings of birds in oak woods--Abundance of caterpillars--Rapacious insects--Wood ants--Alarm cries of woodland birds--Weasel and small birds--Fascination--Weasel and short-tailed vole--Account of Egyptian cats fascinated by fire--Rabbits and stoats--Mystery of fascination--Cases of pre-natal suggestion--Hampshire pigs fascinated by fire--Conjectures as to the origin of fascination--A dead squirrel--A squirrel's fatal leap--Fleas large and small--Shrew and fleas--Fleas in woods--The squirrel's disposition--Food-hiding habit in animals--Memory in squirrels and dogs--The lower kind of memory.

CHAPTER VI.. Insects in Britain--Meadow Ants--the Indoor View of Insect

Insects in Britain--Meadow ants--The indoor view of insect life--Insects in visible nature--The humming-bird hawk-moth and the parson lepidopterist--Rarity of death's-head moth--Hawk-moth and meadow-pipit--Silver-washed fritillaries on bracken--Flight of the white admiral butterfly--Dragon-flies--Want of English names--A water-keeper on dragon-flies--Moses Harris--Why moths have English names--Origin of the dragon-fly's bad reputation--Cordulegaster annulatus--Calopteryx virgo--Dragon-flies congregated--Glow-worm--Firefly and glow-worm compared--Variability in light--The insect's attitude when shining--Supposed use of the light--Hornets--A long-remembered sting--The hornet local in England--A splendid insect--Insects on ivy blossoms in autumn.

CHAPTER VII.. Great and Greatest Among Insects--Our Feeling for Insect

Great and greatest among insects--Our feeling for insect music--Crickets and grasshoppers--Cicada anglica--Locusta viridissima--Character of its music--Colony of green grasshoppers--Harewood Forest--Purple emperor--Grasshoppers' musical contests--The naturalist mocked--Female viridissima--Over-elaboration in the male--Habits of female--Wooing of the male by the female.

CHAPTER VIII.

Hampshire, north and south--A spot abounding in life--Lyndhurst--A white spider--Wooing spider's antics--A New Forest little boy--Blonde gipsies--The boy and the spider--A distant world of spiders--Selborne and its visitors--Selborne revisited--An owl at Alton--A wagtail at the Wakes--The cockerel and the martin--Heat at Selborne--House crickets--Gilbert White on crickets--A colony of field crickets--Water plants--Musk mallow--Girl buntings at Selborne--Evening gatherings of swifts at Selborne--Locustidæ--Thamnotrizon cinereus--English names wanted--Black grasshopper's habits and disposition--Its abundance at Selborne.

CHAPTER IX.

The Selborne atmosphere--Unhealthy faces--Selborne Common--Character of scenery--Wheatham Hill--Hampshire village churches--Gilbert White's strictures--Churches big and little--The peasants' religious feeling--Charm of old village churches--Seeking Priors Dean--Privett church--Blackmoor church--Churchyards--Change in gravestones--Beauty of old gravestones--Red alga on gravestones--Yew trees in churchyards--British dragon-tree--Farringdon village and yew--Crowhurst yew--Hurstbourne Priors yew--How yew trees are injured.

CHAPTER X.

Wolmer Forest--Charm of contrast and novelty in scenery--Aspect of Wolmer--Heath and pine--Colour of water and soil--An old woman's recollections--Story of the "Selborne mob"--Past and present times compared--Hollywater Clump--Age of trees--Bird life in the forest--Teal in their breeding haunts--Boys in the forest--Story of the horn-blower.

CHAPTER XI.

The Hampshire people--Racial differences in neighbouring counties--A neglected subject--Inhabitants of towns--Gentry and peasantry--Four distinct types--The common blonde type--Lean women--Deleterious effects of tea-drinking--A shepherd's testimony--A mixed race--The Anglo-Saxon--Case of reversion of type--Un-Saxon character of the British--Dark-eyed Hampshire people--Racial feeling with regard to eye-colours--The Iberian type--Its persistence--Character of the small dark man--Dark and blonde children--A dark village child.

CHAPTER XII.

Test and Itchen--Vegetation--Riverside villages--The cottage by the river--Itchen valley--Blossoming limes--Bird visitors--Goldfinch--Cirl bunting--Song--Plumage--Three common river birds--Coots--Moor-hen and nest--Little grebes' struggles--Male grebe's devotion--Parent coot's wisdom--A more or less happy family--Dogged little grebes--Grebes training their young--Fishing birds and fascination.

CHAPTER XIII.. Morning in the Valley--Abundance of Swifts--Unlikeness to Other

Morning in the valley--Abundance of swifts--Unlikeness to other birds--Mayfly and swallows--Mayfly and swift--Bad weather and hail--Swallows in the rain--Sand martins--An orphaned blackbird--Tamed by feeding--Survival of gregarious instinct in young blackbirds--Blackbird's good-night--Cirl buntings--Breeding habits and language--Habits of the young--Reed bunting--Beautiful weather--The oak in August.

CHAPTER XIV.. Yellow Flowers--Family Likeness in Flavours and Scents--_mimulus

Yellow flowers--Family likeness in flavours and scents--Mimulus luteus--Flowers in church decoration--Effect of association--Mimulus luteus as a British plant--A rule as to naturalised plants wanted--A visit to Swarraton--Changes since Gilbert White's day--"Wild musk"--Bird life on the downs--Turtle-dove nestlings--Blue skin in doves--A boy naturalist--Birds at the cottage--The wren's sun-bath--Wild fruits ripen--An old chalk pit--Birds and elderberries--Past and present times compared--Calm days--Migration of swallows--Conclusion.

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HAMPSHIRE DAYS

CHAPTER I

Autumn in the New Forest--Red colour in mammals--November mildness--A house by the Boldre--An ideal spot for small birds--Abundance of nests--Small mammals and the weasel's part--Voles and mice--Hornet and bank-vole--Young shrews--A squirrel's visit--Green woodpecker's drumming-tree--Drumming of other species--Beauty of great spotted woodpecker--The cuckoo controversy--A cuckoo in a robin's nest--Behaviour of the cuckoo--Extreme irritability--Manner of ejecting eggs and birds from the nest--Loss of irritability--Insensibility of the parent robins--Discourse on mistaken kindness, pain and death in nature, the annual destruction of bird life, and the young cuckoo's instinct.

Here, by chance, in the early days of December 1902, at the very spot where my book begins, I am about to bring it to an end.

A few days ago, coming hither from the higher country at Silchester, where the trees were already nearly bare, I was surprised to find the oak woods of this lower southern part of the New Forest still in their full autumnal foliage. Even now, so late in the year, after many successive days and nights of rain and wind, they are in leaf still: everywhere the woods are yellow, here where the oak predominates; the stronger golden-red and russet tints of the beech are vanished. We have rain and wind on most days, or rather mist and rain by day and wind with storms of rain by night; days, too, or parts of days, when it {2} is very dark and still, and when there is a universal greyness in earth and sky. At such times, seen against the distant slaty darkness or in the blue-grey misty atmosphere, the yellow woods look almost more beautiful than in fine weather.

The wet woodland roads and paths are everywhere strewn, and in places buried deep in fallen leaves--yellow, red, and russet; and this colour is continued under the trees all through the woods, where the dead bracken has now taken that deep tint which it will keep so long as there is rain or mist to wet it for the next four or five months. Dead bracken with dead leaves on a reddish soil; and where the woods are fir, the ground is carpeted with lately-fallen needles of a chestnut red, which brightens almost to orange in the rain. Now, at this season, in this universal redness of the earth where trees and bracken grow, we see that Nature is justified in having given that colour--red and reddish-yellow--to all or to most of her woodland mammals. Fox and foumart and weasel and stoat; the hare too; the bright squirrel; the dormouse and harvest-mouse; the bank-vole and the wood-mouse. Even the common shrew and lesser shrew, though they rarely come out by day, have a reddish tinge on their fur. Water-shrew and water-vole inhabit the banks of streams, and are safer without such a colour; the dark grey badger is strictly a night rover.

Sometimes about noon the clouds grow thin in that part of the sky, low down, where the sun is, and a pale gleam of sunlight filters through; even a {3} patch of lucid blue sky sometimes becomes visible for a while: but the light soon fades; after mid-day the dimness increases, and before long one begins to think that evening has come. Withal it is singularly mild. One could almost imagine in this season of mist and wet and soft airs in late November that this is a land where days grew short and dark indeed, but where winter comes not, and the sensation of cold is unknown. It is pleasant to be out of doors in such weather, to stand in the coloured woods listening to that autumn sound of tits and other little birds wandering through the high trees in straggling parties, talking and calling to one another in their small sharp voices. Or to walk by the Boldre, or, as some call it, the Lymington, a slow, tame stream in summer, invisible till you are close to it; but now, in flood, the trees that grow on its banks and hid it in summer are seen standing deep in a broad, rushing, noisy river.

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