In time I discovered whence they came. They were literally "dropping from the sky." The flocks were travelling at a height at which they were quite invisible in the cloudy air, and from minute to minute they kept dropping down into sight, and so perpendicularly to the very surface of the river or of the eyot. One of these flocks dropped from the invisible regions to the lawn on the river bank on which I stood. Without exaggeration I may say that I saw them fall from the sky, for I was looking upwards, and saw them when first visible as descending specks. The plunge was perpendicular till within ten yards of the ground. Soon the high-flying crowds of birds drew down, and swept for a few minutes low over the willows, from end to end of the eyot, with a sound like the rush of water in a hydraulic pipe. Then by a common impulse the whole mass settled down from end to end of the island, upon the osiers. Those in the centre of the eyot were black with swallows—like the black blight on beans.

Next morning, at 6.30 a.m., every swallow was gone. In half an hour's watching not a bird was seen. Whether they went on during the night, or started at dawn, I know not. Probably the latter, for Gilbert White once found a heath covered with such a flock of migrating swallows, which did not leave till the sun dispelled the mists.

The migration routes of birds follow river valleys, when these are conveniently in line with the course they wish to take. There is far more food along a river than elsewhere, and this is a consideration, for most birds, in spite of the wonderful stories of thousand-mile flights, prefer to rest and feed when making long migrations, and also those short shifts of locality which temporary hard weather causes. A friend just back from Khartoum tells me that he saw the storks descending from vast heights to rest at night on the Nile sandbanks, and saw their departing flight early in the morning, these birds being in flocks of hundreds and thousands.

By watching the river carefully for many years I have noticed that it is a regular migration route for several species besides swallows. The first to begin the "trek" down the river are the early broods of water-wagtails, both yellow and pied. They turn up in small flocks so early in the summer that one might almost doubt if they could fly well enough to take care of themselves. On June 26th last summer nearly forty were flying about in the evening, and went across to roost on the eyot. Later numbers of blackbirds arrive, also moving down the river. Sand-martins, when beginning the migration, travel down the Thames in small flocks, and sleep each night in different osier beds. How many stages they make when "going easy" down the river no one knows. But I have seen the flocks come along just before dusk, straight down stream, and then dropping into an osier bed.

In the second week of September there is usually an immense migration of house-martins and swallows down the river. I have already described what I once saw on a migration night on Chiswick Eyot. Sometimes they go on past London, and find themselves near Thames mouth with no osier beds or shelter of any kind. Then they settle on ships. I was told that one morning the craft lying in Hole Haven off Canvey Island were covered with swallows, all too numb to move, but that when the sun came out the greater number flew away towards the sea. The same thing happened on the windmill at Cley, in Norfolk, a famous starting and alighting place for birds. Moorhens evidently migrate up or down the river in spring and autumn, and occasionally dabchicks; otherwise their sudden appearance and disappearance on the eyot could not be accounted for. Snipe follow the Thames up the valley. Formerly Chiswick Eyot was their first alighting place when east winds were blowing, after the fatigue of crossing London; and persons still living used to go out and shoot them. A friend of mine, whose family has resided in Chiswick for several generations, used to go down the outside of the eyot and kill snipe, and also kill teal and duck in the stream which runs from Chiswick House into the river. Another friend broke a young pointer to partridges on the market garden between Barnes Bridge and Chiswick.

Probably a number of the warblers also use the river as a migration road, though I only notice them in spring. But as I am never here in early September possibly many pass without being noticed. Also they are silent in autumn, whereas in spring they sing, a little, but enough to show that they are there.

Among the birds of this kind which pass up the river, but of which only a few pairs stay to breed on the eyot, are whitethroats, blackcaps, chiff-chaffs, and, I believe, nightingales. One beautiful early morning in spring I could not believe my ears, but I heard a nightingale in a bush by the side of the garden overhanging the river. It sang for about an hour, "practising" as nightingales do. Another person in a house near also heard it, and was equally astonished. It probably passed on, for next day it was inaudible.

In hard weather a migration of a different kind takes place down the river towards the sea. These birds are recruited from the ranks of the birds that stay, with some foreign winter visitors also. They pass down the river feeding on the mud and among the stones at ebb tide. Among those I have seen are flocks of starlings and scattered birds, mainly redwings, thrushes, blackbirds, and occasionally robins. Sandpipers also migrate up the Thames in spring, and down it in autumn.



WITTENHAM WOOD

In Wittenham Wood, which in our time was not spoiled, from a naturalist's point of view, by too much trapping or shooting the enemies of game, though there was plenty of wild game in it, the balance of nature was quite undisturbed. Of course we never shot a hawk or an owl, and I think the most important item of vermin killed was two cats, which were hung up as an awful instance of what we could do if we liked.



In such large isolated woods, the wild life of the ordinary countryside exists under conditions somewhat differing from those found even in estates where the natural cover of woodland is broken up into copses and plantations. Birds and beasts, and even vegetation, are found in an intermediate stage between the wholly artificial life on cultivated land and the natural life in true forest districts like the New Forest or Exmoor. Most of these woods are cut bare, so far as the underwood extends, once in every seven years. But the cutting is always limited to a seventh of the wood. This leaves the ground covered with seven stages of growth, the large trees remaining unfelled. With the exception of this annual disturbance of a seventh of the area, and a few days' hunting and shooting, limited by the difficulty of beating such extensive tracts of cover, the wood remains undisturbed for the twelve months, and all wild animals are naturally tempted to make it a permanent home.

As I have said, the wood stands on the banks of the Thames, below the old fortress of Sinodun Hill, and opposite to the junction of the River Thame. All the British land carnivora except the martin cat and the wild cat are found in it. The writer recently saw the skin of a cat which had reverted to the exact size, colouring, and length of fur of the wild species, killed in the well-known Bagley Wood, an area of similar character, but of much greater extent, at a few miles distance in the direction of Oxford. A polecat was domiciled in Wittenham Wood as lately as August, 1898. Though this animal is reported to be very scarce in many counties, there is little doubt that in such woods it is far commoner than is generally believed. Being mainly a night-hunting animal it escapes notice. But in the quiet of the wood it lays aside its caution, and hunts boldly in the daytime. The cries of a young pheasant in distress, running through some thick bramble patches and clumps of hazel, suggested that some carnivorous animal was near, and on stepping into the thicket a large polecat was seen galloping through the brushwood. Its great size showed that it was a male, and the colour of its fur was to all appearance not the rich brown common to the polecat and the polecat cross in the ferret, but a glossy black. This, according to Mr. W.E. de Winton, perhaps the best authority on the British mustelidae, is the normal tint of the male polecat's fur in summer. "By the 1st of June," he writes, "the fur is entirely changed in both sexes. The female, or 'Jill,' changes her entire coat directly she has young; at the end of April or the beginning of May. The male, or 'Hob,' changes his more leisurely throughout the month of May. He is then known locally as the black ferret, and has a beautiful purplish black coat. As in all mustelidae the male is half as big again as the female." Stoats and weasels are of course attracted to the woods, where, abandoning their habit of methodical hedgerow hunting, they range at large, killing the rabbits in the open wood, and hunting them through the different squares into which the ground is divided with as much perseverance as a hound. They may be seen engaged in this occupation, during which they show little or no fear of man. They will stop when crossing a ride to pick up the scent of the hunted rabbit, and after following it into the next square, run back to have another look at the man they noticed as they went by, with an impudence peculiar to their race. The foxes have selected one of the prettiest tracts of the wood for their breeding-earth. It is dug in a gentle hollow, and at a height of some forty feet above the Thames. From it the cubs have beaten a regular path to the riverside, where they amuse themselves by catching frogs and young water-voles. The parent foxes do not, as a rule, kill much game in the wood itself, except when the cubs are young. They leave it early in the evening and prowl round the outsides, over the hill, and round the Celtic camp above, and beat the river-bank for a great distance up and down stream, catching water-hens and rats. At sunrise they return to the wood, and, as a rule, go to earth. The cubs, on the other hand, never leave it until disturbed by the hounds cub-hunting in September. Otters, which travel up and down the river, and occasionally lie in the osier-bed which joins the wood, complete the list of predatory quadrupeds which haunt it. With the exception of the first, the wild cat, and the last, the otter, they constitute its normal population, and as long as the stock of rabbits and hares is maintained, they may remain there as long as the wood lasts.

Numerically, the rabbits are more than equal to the total of other species, whether bird or beast.[1] In dry seasons, they swarm in the lighter tracts of the wood, and burrow in every part of it. These wood-rabbits differ in their way of life from those in the open warren outside. Their burrows are less intricate, and not massed together in numbers as in the open. On the other hand, the whole rabbit population of the one hundred acres seems to keep in touch, and occasionally moves in large bodies from one part of the area to another. During one spring and early summer the first broods of young rabbits burrowed tunnels under the wire-netting which encircled the boundary for many hundred yards, and went into a large field of barley adjoining. This they half destroyed. By the middle of August it was found that, instead of the barley being full of rabbits, it was deserted. They had all returned to the wood, and were in their turn bringing up young families. One colony deserted the wood altogether, and formed a separate warren some hundreds of yards away on a steep hillside. On the eastern boundary the river is a complete check to their migration. Except in the great frosts, when the Thames is frozen, no rabbit ever troubles to cross it. Hares do so frequently when coursed, and occasionally when under no pressure of danger. After harvest, when the last barley-fields are cut, the wood is full of hares. They resort to it from all quarters for shelter, and do not emerge in any number until after the fall of the leaf. During the months of August, September, and October these hares, which during the spring and winter lie out in the most open parts of the hills above, lead the life of woodland animals. In place of lying still in a form throughout the day, they move and feed. At all hours they may be heard fidgeting about in the underwood and "creeping" in the regularly used paths in the thick cover. When disturbed they never go at speed, but, confident in the shelter of the wood, hop and canter in circles, without leaving cover. In the evening they come out into the rides, and thence travel out into the clover layers, returning, like the foxes, early in the morning. A badger was found dead in the wood the first year I rented it. This I much regretted, for though it had probably been shot coming out of a cornfield next the wood, the badger is quite harmless, and most useful to the fox hunter, for he cleans out the earths. Mr. E. Dunn, late master of the Old Berkshire, tells me that they are of great service in this way, as they dig and enlarge the earths, and so prevent the taint of mange clinging to the sides if a mangy fox has lain in them.



Lying between the river and the hills, this wood holds nearly every species of the larger woodland and riverine birds common to southern England. The hobby breeds there yearly. The wild pheasant, crow, sparrow-hawk, kestrel, magpie, jay, ringdove, brown owl, water-hen (on the river-bounded side), in summer the cuckoo and turtle-dove, are all found there, and, with the exception of the pigeons and kestrels, which seek their food at a distance during the day, they seldom leave the shelter of its trees. One other species frequents the more open parts of the cover in yearly greater numbers; this is the common grey partridge. The wood has an increasing attraction for them. They nest in it, fly to it at once for shelter when disturbed, lie in the thick copses during the heat of the day, and roost there at night. Several covies may be seen on the wing in a few minutes if the stubbles outside are disturbed in the evening, flying to the wood. There they alight, and run like pheasants, refusing to rise if followed. It is said that in the most thickly planted parts of Hampshire the partridge is becoming a woodland bird, like the ruffed grouse of North America. All that it needs to learn is how to perch in a tree, an art which the red-legged partridge possesses. The birds, unlike the foxes, hares, and rabbits, avoid the centre of the wood. Only the owls and wood-pigeons haunt the interior. All the other species live upon the edge. They dislike the darkness, and draw towards the sun. The jays keep mainly to one corner by the river. The sparrow-hawks have also their favourite corner. The wild pheasants lead a life in curious contrast to that of the tame birds in the preserves. Like their ancestors in China and the Caucasus, they prefer the osier-beds and reeds by the river to the higher and drier ground. But in common with all the other birds of the wood, with the exception of the brown owls, they move round the wood daily, following the sun. In the early morning they are on the eastern margin to meet the sunrise. At noon they move round to the south, and in the evening are on the stubbles to the west. Where the pheasants are there will the other birds be found, in an unconscious search for light. It is the shelter and safety of the big wood, and not the presence of crowded vegetation, that attracts them. They seek the wood, not from choice, but because it is a city of refuge.

[1] These observations were made some years ago. I believe it has been found necessary to kill down the rabbits since.



SPORT AT WITTENHAM

There is always some rivalry about shooting different woods on adjacent properties, and the villages near always take a certain interest in the results. Visiting our nearest riverside inn to order luncheon for our own shoot that week, I found about a dozen labourers in the front room, with a high settle before the fire to keep the draught out, sitting in a fine mixed odour of burning wood, beer, and pipes. Sport was the pervading topic, for a popular resident had been shooting his wood, and many of the men had been beating for him, and had their usual half-crown to spend. They were all talking over the day at the top of their voices; it had been a very good one. The wood is quite isolated and not more than forty acres. All round it is the property of one of the Oxford Colleges, which retains the sporting rights over about fifteen hundred acres. This is exercised by one of their senior fellows under some arrangement which works perfectly well so far as I can see. I asked our keeper, who always calls him "The Doctor," whether he was a medicine doctor or a doctor of divinity. He inclined to think he was the latter, as he belonged to college shooting. This way of putting it struck me as odd, but he was right. Any way, he looked a very pleasant figure in his long shooting coat and old-fashioned Bedford cords. There is also a college keeper, who is an institution in the village. The day's sport in "the Captain's wood" had been a success. Forty hares had been shot, or just one per acre, as well as a number of rabbits and wild pheasants. The hares were being sent round the village in very generous fashion, and a dozen lay on a bench in a back room.

Our own day was also a satisfactory one. Rabbits were unusually numerous, and many squares had to be beaten twice. The gross total of the two days was only something over three hundred head; but it was all wild game, and shot in very pretty surroundings. With the beaters were the keeper, who is also head woodman, and two assistant woodmen. These three men cut the whole of the hundred acres down in the course of seven years. Putting their lives at something over three score and ten, they will, as they began before they were twenty-one, have cut the wood down about eight times in the course of their existence. The beaters are entirely recruited from the staff of this very large and well-managed farm. They have beaten the woods so often that they know exactly what to do, when properly generalled. Our landlord was one of the guns, and his son, who does not shoot, but knows the wood thoroughly, kindly took command of the men, and kept things going at best pace through the day. Anything prettier than the entrance to the wood would be hard to find. A long meadow slopes steeply to the Thames, with an old church and the remains of a manor house at one end and the wood at the other. Below the house is a roaring weir, and opposite the abbey of Dorchester across the flats. Our little campaign gave an added interest to the scene. The bulk of the men were going round behind the hills to drive these "kopjes" into the wood. The guns and one or two ladies, and some small boys bearing burdens were walking up the middle ride. Below was the silver Thames in best autumn livery, for the leaf was not yet off the willows, though the reed-beds were bright russet. The sky was blue, the sun bright, and the sound of the weir came gaily up through the trees. All the wood-paths were bright with moss, the air still, and an endless shower of leaves from the oaks was falling over the whole hundred acres. There were just enough wild pheasants in the wood to make a variety in the rabbit-shooting. Hares were unexpectedly numerous, and we lined up on the side of the wood furthest from the river for a hare drive. The whole hillside is without a hedge. Watching the long slope it is a pretty and exciting sport to see the coveys of partridges, of which there are sometimes a number on the hill, rise, fly down and pitch again, and then rise once more and come fifty miles an hour over your head into the wood.

The hares are generally very wild, getting up while the folds of the ground are still between them and the beaters. As they seldom come straight into the wood it is amusing to guess which particular gun they will make for. Most of them slipped in at a safe distance, only to be picked up in the wood later. A few birds were shot, and the cover now held some forty partridges, though they are very wild in the low slop, and seldom leave more than one or two stragglers behind when the wood is beaten. The rabbit-shooting in the cover is difficult unless firing at "creepers" from the cover in front is indulged in. The rides are often very narrow, and the rabbits cross like lightning. Shooting "creepers" is also highly dangerous if there are many guns, or if the men are near. They do not seem to mind; indeed, I have known them shout out exhortations for us to fire, when only screened by a row of thistles. One thing I have learnt by shooting this big wood. The hares, and late in the season the rabbits, move at least one square ahead of the beaters. If a single gun is kept well forward, choosing his own place and taking turnabout with the others, the bag—if it is wished to kill down the ground game—will be considerably increased. One object when shooting this wood is to get the ground beaten quickly; if there are twenty squares to be beaten, and five minutes are wasted at each, it means a loss of one hour forty minutes. The guns consequently go best pace to their places forward after each beat. What with running at a jog-trot down the rides, shooting hard when in place, and then getting on quickly to the next stand, often along spongy or clayey rides on a nice, warm, moist November day, this is by no means the armchair work which people are fond of calling wood shooting. The variety of scenery in the wood added much to the charm. Sometimes we were in the narrow rides covered with short turf and almost arched over by the tall hazels; sometimes we were in low slop or walking through last year's cuttings, shooting at impossible rabbits. There we had an occasional rise of those most difficult of all birds to kill, partridge in cover, killing both French and English birds; or a cock pheasant would rise and hustle forward, an agreement having been made to leave these till properly beaten up later in the day. Two very pretty corners were perhaps the most enjoyable parts of the sport. By the river was a flat reed- and rush-covered corner, with a ring of oaks round, the Thames at the bottom, and some tall chestnut-trees on the outside. As the men advanced we had a regular rise of wild pheasants, rocketing up from the reeds in every direction high over the oaks and chestnuts. A fox helped the fun by trotting up and down in the reeds uncertain which way to go, and flushing the birds as he did so. Then the rushes were walked out and the rabbits sent darting in every direction. After this we hardly found a bird or rabbit in that corner during the season.

That year the wood gave constant sport, far better than in the later years. There were three times as many rabbits, as well as hares and pheasants.

One day in January we shot it during a fall of fine, dry snow. As the day went on the ground grew white, and our coats whiter. At luncheon the men were quite prepared for the emergency, or rather had prepared for it the day before when the frost began. They had a bonfire of brambles a dozen feet high, and faggots ready as seats, one set for us on one side of the fire, another for themselves on the other. The roaring blaze of the fire warmed us through and through, and by the end of luncheon our coats, which had been powdered with snow, were grey with wood ash descending. During this day a fox hung round us during the whole shoot. I think he must have been picking up and burying or hiding wounded rabbits, for every now and then he would come out into the ride, carefully smell the various places where rabbits had crossed, and then, selecting one, would go off like a retriever into the cover.



SPORT AT WITTENHAM (continued)

A month later Mr. Harcourt was shooting his woods at Nuneham. There are more than four hundred acres of woods round this most beautiful park, all of them giving ideal English estate scenery. The oaks of the park are like those at Richmond, but there is not much fern except in the covers. Nuneham is the best natural pheasant preserve in the Thames Valley, except Wytham, Lord Abingdon's place, above Oxford. The woods lie roughly in a ring round the park, in which the pheasants sun themselves. Outside these woods are arable fields with quantities of feed, and all along the front lies the river, which the pheasants do not often cross. The most striking sport at Nuneham is the driving of the island by the lock cottage. Every one who has been at Oxford has rowed down to have tea under the lovely hanging woods by the old lock. Few see it later in the year when the island opposite is covered with masses of silver-white clematis and thousands of red berries of the wild rose and thorn. In the late autumn mornings, when the mists are floating among the tall trees on the hill and the sunbeams just striking down through the vapours as they top the wood from the east, it is one of the prettiest sights on the Thames. In November or early December, when the woods are shot, numbers of pheasants are always found on the island. It holds a pool, in which and on the river are usually a number of wild ducks. Shooting from the river itself is now forbidden, and these and the half-wild duck have multiplied. The beaters, in white smocks, all cross the old rustic bridge like a procession of white-robed monks, and drive this island, and wild ducks and pheasants come out high over the river, making for the top of the hill. The shooting is fast and difficult, and the scene as the guns fire from the stations all along the bank is most picturesque.

Shooting with a neighbour on some land adjoining Nuneham, my attention was drawn to the very elegant appearance of all the gates and rails adjacent to the road. As the ground was always beautifully farmed and in good order, the condition of the gates did not surprise me. There was, however, a story attached to their smartness. A seller of quack medicines had sent out advertisers with most objectionable little bills, which he had posted on every gate adjoining the roads. My entertainer, who was the occupier of the land, had brought an action against the medicine man for defacing his gates, which was only compromised by the delinquent undertaking to paint every gate. He demurred at first to painting the railings too, but in the end had to do this also.

The stalking-horse is still part of the sporting equipment of some old Thames-valley farmhouses, but not in this neighbourhood. Only one wet season fell to my lot, and then, though I often saw bodies of duck, I had no opportunity of getting near them. A neighbour anchored a punt under a hedge on the line which he believed the duck would take at dusk, and killed several. Hard frosts send large bodies of duck to the river; they come as soon as ever the large private lakes, like those at Blenheim, Wootton, and Eynsham are frozen, and lie in small flocks all along the river. Water-hens are so numerous on the river now, owing to their preservation by the Conservancy, that any small covers of osier near are full of them. They make extremely pretty old-fashioned shooting when beaten up by a spaniel from the sedge and osier cover. I once turned out a dozen water-hens, a brown owl, a woodcock, and a water-rail from one little withe patch. When shooting the wood we always had one or two water-hens in the bag, and sometimes a chance at a duck flying overhead from the river. Only once were there many woodcocks in the cover. There must have been at least five, and all were missed. At last, as we were finishing the beat, one of the guns, who was young and keen, went off after the last-missed cock along the river bank. As we were loading up the game at the wood gate we heard a single shot. Then he appeared in the ride with the cock. Both he and his excellent old spaniel received warm congratulations. For my own part I was never tired of by-days in the wood in my first season. The best sport was starting rabbits from under the rows of fresh-felled ash and hazel poles, which the woodman called drills. They are about five feet high and seven feet through. The rabbits get under them in numbers, and sit there all day. We had an old retriever who was an expert at finding them. The next process was for the gun to clamber on to the top and stand knee-deep on the springing faggots, while a woodman on each side poked the rabbit out with a pole. He might bolt any way, and was under the next drill in a trice, so the shooting was quick. I bagged twelve one afternoon in this cheerful manner. Another great ambition of our lives was to get the better of the hill partridges. There were plenty of them, but they always dived into the wood, and were lost for the day. Only once did we score off them. We drove about sixty from the hills into the wood. There they were seen running along the rides like guinea fowls, but by placing a gun at the corner of the wood, and beating towards him, we killed nine brace.



A FEBRUARY FOX HUNT

When the Yeomanry left the hunting field for South Africa, and "registered" horses were commandeered by Government, fox hunting in counties where it is not the main business of life might be supposed to languish. As a matter of fact, it did not; and if the fields were smaller than usual, and a good many familiar faces missing, the master very properly felt that as he had his pack and there were plenty of foxes, he might as well employ the one and hunt the other, and keep up the spirits of the county by good, sound sport and plenty of it. Masters who take this view, and there are very few who do not, are public benefactors and shining examples; for it is not only the men who hunt who benefit vastly by the change and exhilaration which hunting brings in its train. The whole countryside enjoys a wholesome tonic by the frequent visits of the hounds, and the well-equipped company with them. Nothing cheers up the village, or cures the influenza, or brings oblivion of war news, or puts every one into conceit with themselves, so quickly, or leaves such a glow of sound satisfaction behind it. It would be odd if it did not, considering the amount of time, money, and trouble spent before the pack trots up to the green before the old grey church at eleven on a February morning. Wittenham Wood lies on the very edge of the Old Berkshire country, and as the river blocks all one side of it is naturally not one of the favourite meets. But at the time of writing, early in February a meet was duly advertised, and punctually to time the hounds were there. Some people seem to think that modern fox-hunting is not so thorough as it was in the past. We know better, and without imitating Mr. Jack Spraggon, or reminding every one present of that "two thousand five hundred—twenty-five 'undred—pounds a year" which Lord Scamperdale did or did not spend on his pack, are very well aware of what our master and the servants and the hounds had done that morning. The meet is on the edge of his country, sixteen miles from his house, and he has ridden over all the way, rising before the sun has got through more than the outside layer of the mists. There is no special honour and glory awaiting him in return. The cover to be drawn is surrounded for miles by deep and holding land now soaked with rain. A run of any distinction is most improbable. On the other hand, there will be plenty of hunting of a certain kind, and the chance of seeing it, for the wood is overlooked by lofty hills. Therefore, though the meet is small, the neighbourhood as a body expect to see plenty of the hounds, and turn up expectant, the farmers on their cobs, the young ladies on ponies and in dog-carts, and all the village who can be spared for an hour on foot, while the small boys regard each other with rapturous grins, and practise "holloaing" to improve their lung-power when the fox breaks. When the hounds appear—they have come nearly as far from the kennels as the master has from home—they are covered with road mud from foot to head. The gritty splashes have changed all the white and tan to grey, and made the black badger-pied. While some roll on the grass and push themselves along sideways to get clean, and others attempt the impossible task of licking the mud off their legs and feet, the older hounds, who are less self-conscious, poke their heads into the hands and against the chests of their ready-made friends, the village children, who rush in while the master and the field and lookers-on are exchanging courtesies, and embrace all the pack whom they can reach. Meantime the "assets" for the day's sport, the material complement on which this present assembly must rely for its day's hunting, lie in the cover and its contents. A hundred acres of wood, in all stages of growth, from the high thickets which the woodmen were felling yesterday, to the teazle and stump-studded slope which they cut last year, with the deep river below and the swelling hills above, is the cover.



What the master would like would be that it should hold but one fox, that that fox should get away over the hills and on to the downs beyond as quickly as possible, and that he should never come back, but be killed three parishes away. But no one believes in such luck; and the local lookers-on do not in the least desire it. They want to see "a day's hunting" in the wood, and a fox to every half-dozen hounds. As a fact there are five foxes, not one, in the wood; and, passing from the general to the particular, we may explain how they came there. The heavy rains of the end of January filled all the drains, in which many foxes lie, so full of water that they abandoned them in sheer disgust, and took to the warm lying of the wood. Among these was a most attractive vixen, whose society kept the rest from leaving when the weather improved; consequently, the wood seemed full of foxes, none of which were disposed to leave it. When the pack trotted up to the main ride, and the huntsman's ringing voice sent them crashing into the four-years' growth by the river, a brace were lying snug and dry in the old ash-stumps. One slipped into the river at once and quietly swam to the opposite bank, while the other crept all along the outside hedge and curled up in the corner waiting on events. The vixen slipped into a badger earth under an old oak and stayed there, and a couple more dog-foxes moved on into four acres of low slop, brambles, shoots, and blackthorns, where they were winded by half the pack, while the other half were running the first fox up the fence. The crash and music of the hounds re-echoed from the trees and the enfolding hills above, the shrieking of the jays as they flit protesting from tree to tree, the hearty ring of the huntsman's voice cheering his hounds—surely all this should send each fox flying out over the fields beyond! But a fox has no nerves. He keeps his head with the coolness of a Red Indian, and a "slimness" all his own. The first fox doubles back along his tracks, crosses the big ride, twenty yards lower, just as that part of the pack which is hunting him flings on up the fence, and waits again till he hears them break out where he first stopped. From outside, where the field are waiting on a knoll which gives a downward view into the rolling acres of the wood, the rest of the pack are seen forcing another fox upwards towards the hills. The sight is as pretty as our woods can show. Down below the red coats of the master and huntsman move up the rides, and the heads and sterns of the broad line of hounds, now all clean and bright after brushing through the wood, rise and fall, appear and vanish, as they leap over or thrust through the low slop and brambles. In front, where a goyle runs up to a hollow of the hill, the ground has been cleared of wood, and the forest of tall teazle-tops is full of goldfinches, flying from seed-head to seed-head, too tame to mind the noise or care for anything but their breakfast. Yet even they gather and fly before the approaching tumult. Hares come hurrying out, and dash over the smooth hillside; magpies rise, poise themselves, slue round, and dive backwards into the wood; and then circumspect, lopping easily and lightly along, a fox crosses through the teazles, and slips down to a drain in the hollow; and see! another fox behind him, along the same path, and on the same errand, for each trots up to a covered drain, looks at it, and finding it stopped, pauses a second to think, and takes his resolve. One slips back into the wood, the other canters to the fence, rising the hill, looks out, whisks his brush and is off—across the turf, over the fifty-acre field of growing wheat, and away to the back of the hills. Half the pack are running the first fox, who has slipped back to the river, but with the other half every one gets clear off, and does his best over the awful ground. The mud explodes like shells as the hoofs crush into it, but somehow every one is across and away, and on to the green road and a line of sainfoin much sooner than could be expected. The fox can be seen crossing the back of the hill, looking big and red, and full of running; but after twenty-five minutes over all sorts of ground, from medium bad to "downright cruel," for the soaking rains have made a very pudding even of the pasture, the fox is run into and killed close to the Thames. No one need be sorry for him, for he had lived by theft and violence for the past two years, and was duly eaten himself by his natural enemies. Then back to the wood again, where the rest of the pack had been whipped off their fox, and were waiting dolefully to begin again, by which time the other foxes, of which two elected to stay, had resolved that come what might, they would stick to the wood, of which they knew every inch by heart; and by keeping under the river bank, sneaking under layers of felled brushwood, dodging along drains, and other devices, postponed their fate for two hours, when one was "chopped" and one broke away and was run till dark. This is not the kind of thing that keeps hunting alive, but it is the kind of day which occurs in most ordinary counties in February, and at which no one greatly grumbles. But if a slow woodland day is unattractive, the man who hunts in a modest way from London and wishes to be sure of a run has no lack of choice. Try, for instance, a day on the South Downs, five miles from the sea, on the vast uplands and among the furze-covered bottoms behind Beachy Head, when the snow-clouds are rolling in from the Channel and dusting the summits of the downs with white. There is at least the certainty of foxes, and of a gallop over the highest and soundest land in the South, and even "February fill-dike" cannot make the going heavy.



EWELME—A HISTORICAL RELIC

At the head of one of the smaller Thames tributaries, a few miles from the river, lies Ewelme, the ancient Aquelma, so called from the springing waters which rise there. There are trout in the brook and excellent water-cresses higher up, which are cultivated scientifically. Also there was a political row in Gladstonian days over an appointment to the living. But the real interest of this exceptionally beautiful Thames-valley village is that it is a survival, almost unchanged, of a "model village" made in the time of the Plantagenets. As such it deserves a place in any history, even a "natural" history, which deals with the river.

The village lies at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, not far from Dorchester. The persons who made it a model village just before the Wars of the Roses were William de la Pole, the first Duke of Suffolk, and his Duchess, Alice, the grandchild of Geoffrey Chaucer. The Duke, as every one knows, was for years the leading spirit in England during the early part of the reign of Henry VI., whose marriage with Margaret of Anjou he arranged in the hope of putting an end to the disastrous war with France. His murder in mid-Channel—when his relentless enemies followed him out to sea, took him from the ship in which he was going into exile, and beheaded him on the thwarts of an open boat—was the forerunner of the most ghastly chapters of blood and vengeance in civil feud ever known in this country. But the grace and dignity of his home life in his palace at Ewelme, with his Duchess to help him, are less well known, though the evidences of it remain little altered at the present day.



Of course there was a village there long before the Duke of Suffolk became possessed of it. It was such a perfect site that if any place in the country round were inhabited, Ewelme would have been first choice. The flow of water is one of the most striking natural features and amenities of the place. It is a natural spring, coming out from the chalk of the Chilterns, and forming immediately a lovely natural pool, under high, tree-grown banks. This is still exactly as it was in the ancient days. No water company has robbed it, and besides "The King's Pool," which is the old name of the water, there are overflowing streams in every direction, now used in careful irrigation for the growth of watercress, one of the prettiest of all forms of minor farming. Fertile land, shelter from gales by the overhanging hill, great trees, and abundance of ever-flowing water, are the natural commodities of the place. It was of some importance very early, for it gave its name to a Hundred. This hundred contains among other places Chalgrove, where Hampden received his death-wound. Ewelme belonged to the Chaucer family. The last male heir was Thomas, son of Geoffrey Chaucer the poet, who left an only daughter Alice, destined to become the greatest lady of her time. She married first the celebrated Earl of Salisbury, who was killed by a cannon-shot while inspecting the defences of Orleans during the siege which Joan of Arc raised. William de la Pole, then Earl of Suffolk, was appointed commander of the English forces in the Earl of Salisbury's place, and not only succeeded to his office, but also married his Countess, who now became Countess of Suffolk. It was long before either the Earl or his Countess could revisit Ewelme, where the Earl must have had some property before his marriage, for his elder brother, Earl Michael, was buried at the public expense in the church of Ewelme after his death at Agincourt. For seventeen years the Earl never left the war in France; but when Henry VI. was grown up he arranged the marriage with Margaret of Anjou, and did his best to promote peace. At this time Suffolk was the most powerful subject in the kingdom. He was made a Marquis, and finally a Duke, and his Duchess was granted the livery of the Garter. In 1424 they built a palace at Ewelme, and in due course rebuilt the church, founded a "hospital for thirteen poor men and two priests," and added to this a school. Palace, church, hospital, and school were all of the same period of architecture, and that the very best of its kind. Thus in the fifteenth century Ewelme was eminently a "one man" place, like most of the model villages of to-day. The palace was moated, and used as a prison as late as the Civil War. Margaret of Anjou was kept there in a kind of honourable confinement for a short time, for long after the Duke's murder the Duchess was in favour once more, in the triumph of the Yorkists, and Margaret, who had been her Queen and patroness, was given to her keeping as a prisoner both in her palace and later at Wallingford Castle. Henry VIII. spent his third honeymoon there, with Jane Seymour, and Prince Rupert lived in it during the Civil War. Later, only the banqueting hall remained, which was converted into a manor house.

But if the palace is gone, the church remains as evidence of the magnificence of the Duke's ideas on the subject of a village place of worship. He seems to have shared the apprehension felt by the Duke in Disraeli's novel "Tancred," that he might be accused of "under-building his position." In design it is very like another large church at Wingfield in Suffolk, where his hereditary possessions lay, and where he was buried after his murder, his body having been given to his widow. The same architect possibly supervised both, but of the two Ewelme Church is the finer. The interior is especially splendid, for in it are the tombs of the Chaucers, and the magnificent sepulchre of the Duchess herself, on which her emaciated figure lies wrapped in her shroud. This tomb of the Duchess Alice is one of the finest monuments of the kind in England. The other relic of the prosperity of Ewelme under the De la Poles is the hospital and school they founded. "God's House" is the name now given to it, and it is kept in good repair and used as an almshouse. The inner court is surrounded by cloisters, and the whole is in exactly the same condition as when it was built. The higher parts, constructed of brick, were the quarters of the priest and schoolmaster. The ruin and subsequent murder of the Duke, who adorned and beautified this model village in the early fifteenth century, took place in 1450. Nearly all France was lost, and in the hopes of conciliating the enemy, Maine and Anjou were given up by Suffolk's advice. He was accused of "selling" the provinces, and a number of vague but damaging charges were drawn up against him on evidence which would not be listened to now in any court or Parliament, except perhaps in a French State trial. Suffolk drew up a petition to the king, which shows among other things the drain which the French wars made on the lives and fortunes of the English nobles. After referring to the "odious and horrible language that runneth through the land almost in every common mouth, sounding to my highest charge and most heaviest slander," he reminded the King that his father had died in the siege of Harfleur, and his eldest brother at Agincourt; that two other brothers were killed at the battle of Jargeau, where he himself had been taken prisoner and had to pay L20,000 ransom; that while his fourth brother was hostage for him he died in the enemy's hands; and that he had borne arms for the King's father and himself "thirty-four winters," and had "abided in the war in France seventeen years without ever seeing this land." The King's favour secured that he should be banished instead of losing his head, for a State trial was never anything better than a judicial murder. The following is the letter written by an eye-witness to Sir John Paston, describing what then happened: "In the sight of all his men he was drawn out of the great ship into the boat, and there was an axe and a stock. And one of the lewdest men of the ship bade him lay down his head and he should be fairly ferd (dealt) with, and die on a sword. And he took a rusty sword and smote off his head with half-a-dozen strokes, and took away his gown of russet and his doublet of velvet mailed, and laid his body on the sands of Dover; and some say his head was set on a pole by it, and his men sit on the land by great circumstance and pray." The writer says, "I have so washed this bill with sorrowful tears that uneths ye shall not read it." The Countess survived his fall and lived to be great and powerful once more. Her son became the brother-in-law of sovereigns, and her grandchildren were princes and princesses.



EEL-TRAPS

Fish and flour go together as bye-products of nearly all our large rivers. The combination comes about thus: Wherever there is a water-mill, a mill cut is made to take the water to it. The larger the river, the bigger and deeper the mill cut and dam, unless the mill is built across an arm of the stream itself. This mill-dam, as every trout-fisher knows, holds the biggest fish, and where there are no trout, or few trout, it will be full of big fish, while in the pool below there are perhaps as many more. Of all the food fishes of our rivers the eel is really far the most important. He flourishes everywhere, in the smallest pools and brooks as well as in the largest rivers, and grows up to a weight of 9 lb. or 10 lb., and sometimes, though rarely, more. His price indicates his worth, and never falls below 10d. per lb. Consequently he is valuable as well as plentiful, and the millers know this well. On nearly all rivers the millers have eel-traps, some of the ancient sort being "bucks," made of withes, and worked by expensive, old-fashioned machinery like the mill gear. Another and most paying dodge of the machine-made order is worked in the mill itself, and makes an annexe to the mill-wheel.

I once spent an agreeable hour watching the making of barley meal and the catching of eels, literally side by side. It was sufficiently good fun to make me put my gun away for the afternoon, and give up a couple of hours' walk, with the chance of a duck, to watch the mill and eel-traps working.

They were both in a perfect old-world bye-end of the Thames Valley, in the meads at the back of the forgotten but perfect abbey of the third order at Dorchester, under the tall east window of which the River Thame was running bank full, fringed with giant poplars, from which the rooks were flying to look at their last year's nests in the abbey trees.

The mill was, as might be supposed, the Abbey Mill; but on driving up the lane I was surprised to see how good and large was the miller's house, a fine dwelling of red and grey brick; and what a length of frontage the old mill showed, built of wood, as most of them are, but with two sets of stones, and space for two wheels. Only one was at work, and that was grinding barley-meal—meal from nasty, foreign barley full of dirt; but the miller had English barley-meal too, soft as velvet and sweet as a new-baked loaf. Stalactites of finest meal dust hung from every nail, peg, cobweb, and rope end on the walls, fine meal strewed the floor, coarse meal poured from the polished shoots, to which the sacks hung by bright steel hooks, and on both floors ancient grindstones stood like monuments of past work and energy, while below and beside all this dust and floury dryness roared the flooded waters of the dam and the beating floats of the wheel. "Have you any eels?" I asked. "Come and see," said the miller.

He stopped his wheel, unbolted the door, and we looked up the mill dam, two hundred yards long, straight as a line, embanked by double rows of ancient yews, the banks made and the trees planted by the monks five hundred years ago. Then we stepped into the wheel-house, where the water, all yellow and foaming, was pouring into two compartments set with iron gratings below, on which it rose and foamed. Seizing a long pole with prongs like walrus teeth, the miller felt below the water on the bars. "Here's one, anyway," he said, and by a dexterous haul scooped up a monster eel on to the floor. In a box which he hauled from the dam he had more, some of 5-lb. weight, which had come down with the flood—an easy and profitable fishery, for the eels can lie in the trap till he hauls them out, and sell well summer and winter. It pays as well as a poultry yard. Once he took a 9-lb. fish; 2-1/2 lb. to 4 lb. are common.

The eel-trap on the old Thames mill stream is imitated in other places where there is no mill. Thus at Mottisfont Abbey on the Test an old mill stream is used to work an hydraulic ram, and also to supply eels for the house; the water is diverted into the eel-trap, and the fish taken at any time. Another dodge for taking eels, which is not in the nature of what is called a "fixed engine," is the movable eel-trap or "grig wheel." It is like a crayfish basket, and is in fact the same thing, only rather larger. They can be obtained from that old river hand, Mr. Bambridge, at Eton, weighted, stoppered, and ready for use, for 7s. 6d. each, and unweighted for 5s. They are neat wicker-work tunnels, with the usual contrivance at the mouth to make the entrance of the eels agreeable and their exit impossible. The "sporting" side of these traps is that a good deal of judgment is needed to set them in the right places in a river. Many people think that eels like carrion and favour mud. Mr. Bambridge says his experience is different, and his "advice to those about to fish" with this kind of eel-trap is suggestive of new ideas about eels. He says that "for bait nothing can beat about a dozen and a-half of small or medium live gudgeon, failing these large minnows, small dace, roach, loach, &c., though in some streams about a dozen good bright large lob worms, threaded on a copper wire and suspended inside, are very effective, and should always be given a trial. Offal I have tried but found useless, eels being a cleaner feeding fish than many are aware of; and feeding principally in gravelly, weedy parts, the basket should be well tucked up under a long flowing weed, as it is to these places they go for food, such as the ground fish, loach, miller's thumb, crayfish, shrimps, mussels, &c. When I worked a fishery near here, I made it a rule after setting the basket to well scratch the soil in front of the entrance with the boathook I used for lowering them, and firmly believe their curiosity was excited by the disturbed gravel. Choose water from four feet to six feet deep, and see basket lays flat. Every morning when picked up, lay them on the bank, pick out all weed and rubbish, and brush them over with a bass broom, keeping them out of water till setting again at dusk."

Eel-bucks, of which few perfect sets now remain, are the fixed engines so often seen on the Thames, and are a costly and rather striking contrivance, adding greatly to the picturesqueness of parts of the river. They are very ancient, and date from days when the "eel-run" was one of the annual events of river life. The eels went down in millions to the sea, and the elvers came up in such tens of millions that they made a black margin to the river on either side by the bank, where they swam because the current was there weakest. The large eels were taken, and are still taken, on their downward journey in autumn. It is then that the Thames fills, and at the first big rush of water the eels begin to descend to reach the mud and sands at the Thames mouth, where they spawn. They always travel by night, and it is then that the heavy eel-bucks are lowered. Often hundredweights are taken in a night, all of good size, one of the largest of which there is any record being one of 15 lb., taken in the Kennet near Newbury. In the "grig-wheels" they are taken as small as 3 oz. or 4 oz.; but in the bucks they rarely weigh less than 1 lb. The darkest nights are the most favourable. Moonlight stops them, and they do not like still weather. The upward migration of eels goes on from February till May on the Thames, but the regular "eel-fare" of the young grigs do not assume any great size till May, when as many as 1,800, about three inches long, were seen to pass a given point in one minute. So say the records. But who could have counted them so fast?

A few recent developments of the eel trade elsewhere show how valuable this may be. Quite lately the Danes discovered that the Lim-fiord and some other shallow Broads on the West Danish Coast were a huge preserve of eels. They began trawling there steadily, and have established a large and lucrative trade in them. On the Bann, in Ireland, eel catching is still done in a large way, and the fish shipped to London. But the most ancient and yet most modern of eel fisheries is on the Adriatic, at Comacchio, where lagoons 140 miles in circumference are stocked with eels, and eel breeding and exporting are carried out on a large scale. Even as early as the sixteenth century the Popes used to derive an income of L12,000 from this source.



SHEEP, PLAIN AND COLOURED

In the Thames Valley there are two very distinguished breeds of sheep—the Cotswolds at the head of the watershed, and the Oxford Downs, near Wallingford. Wallingford lamb is supposed to be the best in the market. There are also the Berkshire Downs sheep, but these are, I think, more obviously cross-bred, or else of the Hampshire breed. The Cotswold sheep are probably a very old breed. They are evidently the original of the woolly "baa-lamb" of the nursery, with long, fleecy wool. The Oxford Downs are a short-woolled sheep. One of the flocks of this breed has been improved by selection, mainly in regard to fecundity, to such an extent that I believe twins are the normal proportion among the lambs. The shepherds, as elsewhere on the large down farms, form a race apart. They are not always on the best of terms with the ordinary farm labourers, I notice. "The shepherd be a working against I," is a complaint I sometimes hear. The real reason is that the shepherd thinks, above all things, of his flock, and of finding them food. The feud between the keeper of sheep and the raiser of crops dates from the days of Cain and Abel.

I heard lately from a gentleman who very frequently occupies the honourable position of judge or steward at the leading agricultural shows, that it is proposed that in future no sheep sent to shows are to be allowed to have their coats rouged, and the judges are in future to make their decisions uninfluenced by the beauties of cosmetics. This decision comes as a great blow to the skilled hands in the business of the "improver," who, by long experience and a nice knowledge of the weaknesses of judges, had brought the art of "making up" pedigree sheep of any particular breed to something very nearly approaching the ideal of perfection. Their wool was clipped so artistically as to resemble a bed of moss, and this being elegantly tinted with rouge or saffron, the sheep assumed the hue of the pink or primrose, according to taste and fancy. The reason for the demand which now requires that the champions of the flock shall be shown "plain" and not coloured is not too technical to appeal to the general public. Those who know the acute anxiety with which the exhibitors of prize animals, from fancy mice to shorthorns, watch them "coming on" as the hour for the show approaches, will treat tenderly, even if they cannot condone, the little weaknesses into which the uses of rouge and saffron led them. When a Southdown which ought to have a contour smooth and rounded as a pear still showed aggravating little pits and hollows where there ought to be none, nothing was easier than to postpone clipping those undesirable hollows till the moment before the show, or if there were bumps where there should be no bumps, to shave the wool down close over them. Left to Nature, the newly-clipped wool would show a different tint from the rest of the fleece; but the rouge or saffron then applied made all things even, to the eye, and the judges to find out whether the animals were "level" or not had to feel them all over. Feeling every six inches of some two hundred sheep's backs is very tiring work; so the judges have struck against rouge, and there is an end of it.

One night, some years ago, an extraordinary thing happened on both lines of downs by the Thames, near Reading, and also along the Chilterns. Most of the flocks over a very large area took a panic and burst from their folds, and next morning thousands of sheep were wandering all over the hills. I feel certain that there must have been an earthquake shock that night. Nothing else could have accounted for such a wide and general stampede. The last authenticated earthquake shock in the South Midlands took place hereabouts in 1775, and was noted at Lord Macclesfield's Castle of Shirbourne, where the water in the moat was seen to rise against the wall of one of the towers.[1]

Are our domestic sheep, except for their highly artificial development of wool, really very different from their wild ancestors, the active and flat-coated animals which still feed on the stony mountain-tops? The ways of sheep, not only in this country but abroad, show that a part at least of their wild nature is still strong in them; and if type photographs of all the representative domestic animals of our time, had been possible a few centuries ago, it may be that even in this country the shape of the animal would be found to have been far nearer to the sheep of St. Kilda and of the wild breeds than it is to-day.

In one of the old Cloth Halls of Norfolk are two fine reliefs in plaster, one showing the Argo, bringing the golden fleece, the other a flock of sheep of the day, with a saint in Bishop's mitre and robes preaching to them. The shepherd, in a smock, is spinning wool with a distaff; and the sheep feeding around him, though carefully modelled, are quite unlike any of the modern breeds. Many of the domestic sheep of hot countries are more slender and less woolly than the wild sheep of the mountains. The black-and-white Somali sheep, for instance, are as smooth as a pointer dog.

But it is in temperament and habits that the close connection between the wild and tame breeds is most clearly shown. The excessive domestication of the flocks of Southern England has killed all interest in them even among those who live in the country, and are keen and sympathetic observers of the ways of every other creature in the fields. The beauty of the lambs attracts attention, and the prettiness of the scene when they and their mothers are placed in some sheltered orchard among the wild daffodils and primroses, or in an early meadow by the brook, makes people wonder why they are so stupid when grown up. But the fact is that when not penned up by hurdles and moved from square to square over a whole farm, so that each inch of food may be devoured, each member of the flock can think for itself, and would, in less artificial surroundings, make for itself a creditable name for independence and intelligence. All sheep have retained this distinguishing habit of their ancestors, that they are by nature migratory, and share with nearly all migrant animals a capacity for thought and organisation, and a knowledge of localities. Wild sheep are migratory because they live by preference on the rocky and stony parts of hills just below the snow-line. This is why the tame sheep do so well on the moors of Scotland and mountains of Switzerland. But as the snow-line descends each winter far below their summer feeding haunts, wild sheep either migrate to the lower slopes of the mountains, or, like the deer of the Rockies, move off altogether to great distances. Every winter, for instance, the lower valleys of Yellowstone Park are filled with deer and antelope from the distant mountains. So the tame flocks of Greece, Thrace, Spain, and even Scotland are migratory. In Scotland their transport is modernised, and they travel regularly by steamer from the islands to winter in the Lowlands, and by train from the Highlands. Two years ago a flock of migratory sheep from Ayrshire came for early spring feeding to Hyde Park, and were there shorn, with their Highland collies looking on. In the "old countries" and the non-progressive East of Europe the migration of the flocks is on a vaster and far more romantic scale. In Spain there are some ten millions of migratory sheep, which every year travel as much as two hundred miles from the plains to the "delectable mountains," where the shepherds feed them till the snows descend. These sheep are known as transhumanies and their march, resting places, and behaviour are regulated by ancient and special laws and tribunals dating from the fourteenth century. At certain times no one is allowed to travel on the same route as the sheep, which have a right to graze on all open and common land on the way, and for which a road ninety yards wide must be left on all enclosed and private property. The shepherds lead the flocks, the sheep follow, and the flock is accompanied by mules carrying provisions, and large dogs which act as guards against the wolves. The Merino sheep travel four hundred miles to the mountains, and the total time spent on the migration there and back is fourteen weeks. In Thrace the migration of the flocks is to the northern ranges of Mount Rhodope. The sheep are said to be no less alert than the Pomak shepherds, obeying a signal to assemble at any moment given by the shepherd's horn. The dogs are ferocious in the extreme, as the enemies of sheep in these parts are more commonly men than wild beasts, and the gentle shepherd, who has, since the Russo-Turkish War, exchanged his long gun for a Winchester rifle, shoots at sight and asks no questions.

The more nearly domestic sheep can approach the life of the primitive stock, the more intelligent their way of life becomes. The cleverest sheep live on the hills, and the stupidest on the plains. In Wales, for instance, if a new tenant takes over the flock of an outgoing tenant, the latter is by law allowed a higher price if the flock is one which knows the boundaries and paths on the hills. On the plains of Argentina, as Mr. Hudson tells us, the lambs are born so stupid that they will run after a puff-ball rolling before the wind, mistaking it for their mother.

[1] This was a tremor of the great earthquake at Lisbon.



SOME RESULTS OF WILD-BIRD PROTECTION

Among the happiest results of the modern feeling about birds is the conversion of the whole of the Thames above the tideway into a "protected area." This was not done by an order of the Secretary of State, who, by existing law, would have had to make orders for each bit of the river in different counties, and often, where it divides counties, would have been obliged to deal separately with each bank. The Thames Conservancy used their powers, and summarily put a stop to shooting on the river throughout their whole jurisdiction. The effect of this was not seen all at once; but little by little the waterfowl began to return, the kingfishers to increase, and all the birds along the banks grew tamer. Then the County Councils of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Berkshire forbade the killing of owls and kingfishers, and this practically made the river and its banks a sanctuary.

The water-hen are so numerous that at Nuneham Lock they run into the cottages, and at other locks the men complain they eat all their winter cabbages. As many as forty at a time have been counted on the meadows. Mr. Harcourt has also established a wild-duck colony on and about the island at Nuneham. The island has a pond in the centre, with sedges and ancient willows and tall trees round. There the really wild ducks join the home-bred ones in winter. Lower down, the scene on late summer days is almost like a poultry-yard, with waterfowl and wild pigeons substituted for ducks and chickens. Young water-hens of all sizes pipe and flutter in the reeds, and feed on the bank within a few feet of those rowing or fishing, and their only enemies are the cats, which, attracted by their numbers, leave the cottages for the river and stalk them, while the old water-hens in vain try to get their too tame young safe on to the water again.

Though kingfishers have increased fast they are less in evidence, being naturally shy after years of persecution. In summer they keep mainly at the back of the willows, away from the river, so long as the latter is crowded with boats.

It was not till November, 1899, that I saw the kingfishers at play, as I had long hoped to do, in such numbers as to make a real feature on the river. It was a brilliant, warm, sunny morning, such as sometimes comes in early winter, and I went down before breakfast to Clifton Bridge. There the shrill cry of the kingfishers was heard on all sides, and I counted seven, chasing each other over the water, darting in swift flight round and round the pool, and perching on the cam-shedding in a row to rest. Presently two flew up and hovered together, like kestrels, over the stream. One suddenly plunged, came up with a fish, and flying to the other, which was still hovering, put the fish into its beak. After this pretty gift and acceptance both flew to the willows, where, let us hope, they shared their breakfast.

In a row down the river extending over ten miles I saw more than twenty kingfishers, most of them flying out, as is their custom, on the side of the willows and osiers averse from the river, but some being quite content to remain on their perches from which they fish, while the boat slipped down in midstream. As they sit absolutely motionless, and the reddish breast, and not the brilliant back, is turned to the water, it needs quick eyes to see these watchers by the stream.

The total prohibition of shooting on the water or banks is also producing the usual effect on the other birds and beasts. They are rapidly becoming tame, and the oarsman has the singular pleasure of floating down among all kinds of birds which do not regard him as an enemy. Young swallows sit fearlessly on the dead willow boughs to be fed by their parents; the reed-buntings and sedge-warblers scarcely move when the oar dips near the sedge on which they sit; wood-pigeons sit on the margin and drink where the pebble-banks or cattle-ways touch the water; and the water-rats will scarcely stop their business of peeling rushes to eat the pith, even if a boatload of children passes by.



The return of the birds, and especially of wild fowl, to the London river is the result partly of the same causes which have restored the fish to its waters; partly, also, of measures affecting a wider area, but carried out with far less physical difficulty. Their presence is evidence that the tidal Thames now yields them a stock of food so abundant as to tempt birds like the heron, the water-hen, and the kingfisher back to their old haunts. It shows, secondly, that the by-laws for the protection of birds passed by the counties of London, Surrey, and Middlesex, and by the Thames Conservancy (which was the pioneer in this direction by forbidding shooting on the river), are so far effective that the stock is rapidly increasing; and, lastly, that the birds are preserved and left in peace to a great extent on the London river itself. The following are the most marked instances of this return of river fowl which have come under the writer's notice; but in every case there have been preliminary advances on the part of the birds, which show that what is now recorded is only one step further in the general tendency to resume their old habits, or even to go beyond their former limits of place and time in resorting to the river. The herons from Richmond Park have extended their usual nightly fishing ground, which formerly ended at Kew Bridge, four miles further down the river, almost to Hammersmith Bridge, and in place of coming late at night, under cover of darkness, have made a practice of flying down at dusk, and pitching on the edge of Chiswick Eyot.[1] Their regular appearance led to various inquiries as to the nature of the "big birds like geese" which flew down the river and made a noise in the evening, questions which were answered, in one case, by the appearance of one of the birds as it swung round in the air opposite a terrace of houses, and dropped in the stream to fish, not twenty yards from the road. As the heron is naturally among the shyest of all waterside birds, and seeks solitude above all things, these visits show that the quantity of fish in the lower river must be great, and also that the London herons, now never shot at, are losing their inbred dislike of houses and humanity. Their footprints have been found on the mud opposite a creek in Hammersmith, round which is one of the most crowded quarters of the poorer folk of West London. The birds had been fishing within ten yards of the houses, which at this point are largely inhabited by organ-grinders and vendors of ice-creams, callings which do not promote quiet and solitude in the immediate neighbourhood. In the evening and early morning a few wild ducks accompany the herons as low as the reach above Hammersmith Bridge, and single ducks have been seen even at midday flying overhead. At sunrise one Midsummer Day I saw a sheldrake (probably an escaped bird) flying down the river, looking very splendid in its black, white, and red plumage, in the bright light of the morning. It haunted the reach for some days, and was not shot. Among other visitors to this part of the river and its island during spring were a curlew, which fed for some time on the eyot during the early morning, and a pair of pheasants, one of which, an old-fashioned English cock bird, was subsequently captured unhurt. A flock of sandpipers remained there for some weeks, and during the summer numbers of sedge-warblers have nested on and around the eyot; the cuckoo has been a regular visitor to the osier-bed in the early morning, probably with a view to laying its eggs in the sedge-warblers' nests. As a set-off to these early visits of the cuckoo, a nightjar has hunted round the islet for moths, both at dusk and during the night, when its note may often be heard. This is a fairly long list of interesting birds revisiting a portion of the river which the London boundary crosses. At a distance of less than half a mile, on some ornamental water near the river, an even more unexpected increase of the bird population has been noted. A pair of kingfishers nested and reared their brood in an old gravel-pit, while several nests of young dabchicks hatched by the pool.[2] There also during the spring a pair of tufted ducks appeared, and remained for some days before going on their journey to their breeding haunts. One lamentable event in the bird life of the Thames deserves mention. A pair of swans ventured to nest within a few hundred feet of the London boundary. The hen, a very shy young bird, laid three eggs on Chiswick Eyot, and the pair, being supplied with material, diligently built up their nest day by day until it was above the tide level. They sat for five weeks, the cock bird keeping anxious guard day and night, while the hen would probably have died of starvation unless fed by kindly neighbours, for the river affords very little food for a swan, and this required far longer time to find than the bird was willing to spare from her nest. This was then robbed in the night, and the cock bird maltreated in defending it. The return of fish and fowl to the London Thames shows by the best of tests that the efforts of the Thames Conservancy to preserve the amenities of the river, of the Sewage Committee of the County Council to maintain its purity, or rather to render it less impure at its mouth, and of the adjacent County Authorities to protect bird life, are all yielding good results, and justify the courage with which such an apparently hopeless task was undertaken. To the Conservancy I would offer one or two suggestions, which County Councillors might also consider. The river is the only large natural feature still left in the area of London and Greater London. Now that it contains water in place of sewage, there is a guarantee that its main element as a natural amenity in a great city will be maintained, and as it becomes purer, so will the facilities which it offers for boating, fishing, and bathing increase. But it should not be embanked beyond the present limit at Putney. Stone walls are not a thing of beauty, and a natural river-bank is. At present, from Putney to Richmond the greater part of the Thames flows between natural boundaries. If these can be maintained, the growth of willows, sedge, hemlock, reeds, water ranunculus, and many other fine and luxuriant plants affords insect food for the fish and shelter for the birds, besides giving to the river its natural floral border. If this is replaced by stone banks the birds and the fish will move elsewhere.

[1] Mr. J.E. Vincent tells me that in 1902 the herons were heard as far down the river as Chelsea.

[2] In the beautiful grounds of Chiswick House, where the present occupier, Dr. T. Tuke, carefully preserves all wild birds.



OSIERS AND WATER-CRESS

Osiers, the shoots of which are cut yearly for making baskets, crates, lobster-pots, and eel-traps are a form of crop of which not nearly as much is made in the Thames Valley as their profitable return warrants. Properly managed they nearly always pay well, and, in addition, they are very ornamental, and for the whole of the summer, autumn, and winter are one of the very best forms of covert for game. They are commonly seen near rivers, especially in parts where the ground is flooded in winter. But osiers may be grown anywhere on good ground, and are a rapid and paying crop, giving very little trouble, though they need some attention even on the banks of tidal rivers. It is estimated that in the whole of Great Britain there are only between 7,000 and 8,000 acres of osier beds, but these average three tons of rods per acre, and the value of the crop when harvested is often at least L15 per acre gross return. As fruit cultivation is immensely increasing in England, there is a corresponding increase in the demand for baskets to put the fruit in. This is the main reason why osiers, unlike most farm crops, keep up their price. Immense quantities are now imported from Belgium, France, and Germany because our own crop is not nearly sufficient.[1] They do not require a wet soil or to be near water: all that the willow roots need is that the land shall be good and not too dry or sandy. Stagnant, boggy ground does not suit them at all, though they will grow well in light loam. Many species of osier are of most brilliant colouring in winter and early spring. In some the rods are golden yellow; in others the bark is almost scarlet with a bright polish, and the osier bed forms a brilliant object from December to February, just before the rods are cut. The kind of willow grown varies from the slender, tough withes used in making small baskets and eel-traps, to the large, fast-growing rods suited for making crates for heavy goods. The planter must find out for which kind there is the readiest market in the neighbourhood, and then get his land ready. It needs thorough clearing and trenching to the depth of from twenty to thirty inches. The young osiers should then be put in. These should be taken from a nursery in which they have been "schooled" for one year, as in that case they will produce a crop fit to cut one year earlier than if the cuttings have been put at once in the new osier-bed. The cuttings when transferred to the bed should be put in twelve inches apart in the rows, and these rows made at two feet distance from each other. They will need hoeing to keep the ground clear, which will cost Ll to L2 per acre for the first two years, and this should be done before the middle of June. When the osiers are well started they grow so densely that they kill out the weeds themselves. The rate of growth even on ordinary field-land is astonishing; they will add eighteen inches in a week. February and March are the months for planting, and March also sees the osier harvest when the time comes to cut them. In the fens the harvesting of the rods begins earlier, but this depends usually on the season, the object being to cut them before the sap begins to rise. Osiers particularly invite the attention of those who are desirous of planting coverts for game. They are a paying crop, and a quick crop, giving cover sooner and of better quality than almost any other form of underwood, and are also very ornamental. It is true that they are cut yearly, but this is not till the shooting season is over. Meantime there is no covert which pheasants like so much as osier-beds, especially if they are near water.

On Chiswick Eyot, which is entirely planted with osiers, there are standing at the time of writing six stacks of bundles set upright. Each stack contains about fifty bundles of the finest rods, nine feet high. Thus the eyot yields at least three hundred bundles. This osier-bed is cut quite early in the year, usually in January, and by February all the fresh rods are planted. Before being peeled the osiers are stood upright in water for a month, and some begin to bud again. This is to make the sap run up, I presume, by which means the bark comes off more readily. I believe that the Chiswick osiers, being of the largest size, are used for making crates, and that they are cut early because there is no need to peel them.

Water-cress growing is an increasing business in the Thames Valley, where the head of every little brook or river in the chalk is used for this purpose. This is good both for business in general and for the fish, for water-cress causes the accumulation of a vast quantity of fish food in various forms.

The artificial culture of water-cress is comparatively modern, and a remarkably pretty side-industry of the country.

Formerly, the cress gatherer was usually a gipsy, or "vagrom man," who wandered up to the springs and by the head waters of brooks at dawn, and took his cresses as the mushroom-gatherer takes mushrooms—by dint of early rising and trespass.



The places where water-cress grows naturally are usually singularly attractive. The plant grows best where springs actually bubble from the ground, either where the waters break out on the lower sides of the chalk downs, or in some limestone-begotten stream where springs rise, sometimes for a distance of one or two miles, bubbling and swelling in the very bed of the brook. There, among dead reeds and flags, the pale green cresses appear very early in the spring, for the water is always warmer which rises from the bosom of the earth. Trout and wild duck haunt the same spots, and one often sees, stuck on a board in the stream, a notice warning off the poor water-cress gatherer, who was supposed to poach the fish.

The happy-go-lucky cress gathering is now a thing of the past, and there are few rural industries more skilfully and profitably conducted. I knew a farmer who, having lost all his capital on a large farm on the downs, took as a last resource to growing the humble "creases" by the springs below. He has now made money once more, and been able to take and cultivate another farm nearly as large as that he worked before, while the area of his water-cress beds still grows.

Wherever a chalk stream, however small, breaks out of the hills, it is usual to let it to a water-cress grower. He widens the channels, and year by year every square foot of the upper waters is planted with cress. Each year, too, new and larger beds are added below, and the cresses creep down the stream. When they encroach on good spawning ground this is very bad for trout; but the beds are pretty enough, forming successive flats, on different levels, of vivid green.

The scene on the Water-cress Farm shows the complete metamorphosis undergone by what was once a swift running brook when once the new culture is taken in hand. When left to Nature, the little chalk stream might truly have said, in the words of the poem—

"I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses, I linger by my shingly bars, I loiter round my cresses."

Now all the brambles and shingle are gone, and the stream is condemned to "loiter round its cresses," and to do nothing else. The water must not be more than six inches deep, and it must not flow too fast. To secure these conditions little dams, some made of earth and some of boards, are built from side to side of the brook. The water thus appears to descend in a series of steps, each communicating with the next by earthen pipes, through which the water spouts. When a fresh bed of cresses is to be planted, which is done usually towards the end of summer, a sluice is opened, and only an inch or so of water left. On this cuttings from the cress are strewn, which soon take root, and make a bed fit for gathering by next spring.

From February to April the cresses are at their best. Their flavour is good, their leaves crisp, and they come at a time when no outdoor salad can be grown. As the beds are set close to the fresh springs, they are seldom frozen. Hence, in very hard weather all the birds flock to the cress-beds, where they find running water and a certain quantity of food. If the beds do freeze, the cress is destroyed, and the loss is very serious.

Gathering cresses is a very pleasant job in summer, but in early spring one of the most cheerless occupations conceivable short of gathering Iceland moss. The men wear waterproof boots, reaching up the thighs, and thick stockings inside these. But the water is icy cold. The cress plants are then not tall, as they are later, but short and bushy. They need careful picking, too, in order not to injure the second crop. Then the cold and dripping cresses have to be trimmed, tied into bundles, and packed. When "dressed" they are laid in strong, flat hampers, called "flats," the lids of which are squeezed down tight on to them. The edges are then cut neatly with a sharp knife, and the baskets placed in running water, until the carts are ready to drive them to the station. Not London only but the great towns of the North consume the cress grown in the South of England. A great part of that grown in the springs which break out under the Berkshire Downs goes to Manchester.

One basket holds about two hundred large bunches. From each of these a dozen of the small bunches retailed at a penny each can be made; and every square rod of the cress-bed yields two baskets at a cutting.

In one of the East London suburbs, near to the reservoirs of a water company, it has been found worth while to create an artificial spring, by making an arrangement with the waterworks for a constant supply. This flows from a stand-pipe and irrigates the cress-beds, which produce good cresses, though not of such fine flavour as those grown in natural spring water and upon a chalk soil.

[1] Fishermen in the Isle of Wight send all the way to the Midlands to get the little scarlet withes required for making lobster-pots.



FOG AND DEW PONDS

The cycle of dry seasons seems to be indefinitely prolonged. During the period, now lasting since 1893, in which we have had practically no wet summers, and many very hot ones, a very curious phenomenon has been remarked upon the high and dry chalk downs. The dew ponds, so called because they are believed to be fed by dew and vapours, and not by rain, have kept their water, while the deeper ponds in the valleys have often failed. The shepherds on the downs are careful observers of these ponds, because if they run dry they have to take their sheep to a distance or draw water for them from very deep wells. They maintain that there are on the downs some dew ponds which have never been known to run dry. Others which do run dry do so because the bottom is injured by driving sheep into them and so perforating the bed when the water is shallow, and not from the failure of the invisible means of supply. There seem to be two sources whence these ponds draw water, the dew and the fogs. Summer fogs are very common at night on the high downs, though people who go to bed and get up at normal hours do not know of them. These fogs are so wet that a man riding up on to the hills at 4 a.m. may find his clothes wringing wet, and every tree dripping water, just as during the first week of last November in London many trees distilled pools of water from the fog, as if it had been pouring with rain. Such was the case on July 4th, 1901. The fogs will draw up the hollows towards the ponds, and hang densely round them. Fog and dew may or may not come together; but generally there is a heavy dew deposit on the grass when a fog lies on the hills. After such fogs, though rain may not have fallen for a month, and there is no water channel or spring near the dew pond, the water in it rises prodigiously. Every shepherd knows this, but the actual measurements of this contribution of the vapour-laden air have not often been taken. Yet the subject is an interesting one, and of real importance to all dwellers on high hills, especially those which, like the South Downs, are near the sea, and attract great masses of fog and vapour-laden cloud, but contain few springs on the high rolls of the hills.

The following are some notes of the rise in a dew pond caused by winter fogs on the Berkshire Downs. They were recorded by the Rev. J.G. Cornish at Lockinge, in Berkshire, and taken at his suggestion by a shepherd[1] in a simple and ingenious way. Whenever he thought that a heavy dew or fog was to be expected (and the shepherds are rarely wrong as weather prophets) he notched a stick, and drove it into the pond overnight, so that the notch was level with the surface. Next morning he pulled it up, marked how high the water had risen above the notch, and nicked it again for measurement. On January 18th, after a night of fog, the water rose 1-1/2 in.; on the next day, after another fog, 2 in.; and on January 24th, 1 in. Five nights of winter fog gave a total rise of 8 ins.—a vast weight of water even in a pond of moderate area. Five days of heavy spring dew in April and May, with no fog, gave a total rise in the same pond of 3-1/2 ins., the dews, though one was very heavy, giving less water than the fogs, one of which even in May caused the water to rise 1-1/2 ins.[2] The shepherds say that it is always well to have one or two trees hanging over the pond, for that these distil the water from the fog. This is certainly the case. The drops may be heard raining on to the surface in heavy mists. During the first October mists of 1891 the pavement under certain trees was as wet as if it had been raining, while elsewhere the dust lay like powder. The water was still dripping from these trees at 7 a.m. Under the plane-trees the fallen leaves were as wet from distilled moisture as if they had been dipped in water; yet the ground beyond the spread of the tree was dry. The writer tried a simple experiment in this distilling power of trees. At sundown, two vessels were placed, one under a small cherry-tree in full leaf, the other on some stone flags. Heavy dew was falling and condensing on all vegetation, and on some other objects, with the curious capriciousness which the dewfall seems to show. The leaves of some trees were already wet. In the morning the vessel under the tree, and that in the open, both held a considerable quantity of water, that on the stone caught from dew and condensation, that under the tree mainly from what had dripped from the leaves, which clearly intercepted the direct fall of dew. But the vessel under the tree held just twice as much water as that in the open, the surplus being almost entirely derived from drops precipitated from the leaves. Mr. Sanderson, the manager of the elephant-catching establishment of the Indian Government, noted that in heavy dews in the jungle the water condensed by the leaves could be heard falling like a heavy shower of rain.

Gilbert White, who noticed everything, and lived near a chalk hill, makes some shrewd conjectures, both about the dew ponds and the part which trees play in distilling water from fog, though he does not form the practical conclusion, which we think is a safe one, that the most fog-distilling trees should be discovered and planted to help to supply the water in these air-tapping reservoirs. "To a thinking mind," he writes, "few phenomena are more strange than the state of little ponds on the summits of the chalk hills, many of which are never dry in the most trying droughts of summer. On chalk hills, I say, because in many rocky and gravelly soils springs usually break out pretty high on the sides of elevated grounds and mountains; but no persons acquainted with chalky districts will allow that they ever saw springs in such a soil but in valleys and bottoms, since the waters of so pervious a stratum as chalk all lie on one dead level, as well-diggers have assured me again and again. Now we have many such little round ponds in this district, and one in particular on our sheep-down, three hundred feet above my house, and containing perhaps not more than two or three hundred hogsheads of water; yet it is never known to fail, though it affords drink for three or four hundred sheep, and for at least twenty head of large cattle beside. This pond, it is true, is overhung with two moderate beeches, that doubtless at times afford it much supply. But then we have others as small, which, without the aid of trees, and in spite of evaporation from sun and wind and perpetual consumption by cattle, yet constantly contain a moderate share of water, without overflowing in the winter, as they would do if supplied by springs. By my Journal of May, 1775, it appears that 'the small and even the considerable ponds in the vales are now dried up, but the small ponds on the very tops of the hills are but little affected.' Can this difference be accounted for by evaporation alone, which is certainly more prevalent in the bottoms? Or, rather, have not these elevated pools some unnoticed recruits, which in the night time counterbalance the waste of the day?" These unnoticed recruits, though it is now certain that they come in the form of those swimming vapours from which little moisture seems to fall, are enlisted by means still not certainly known. The common explanation was that the cool surface of the water condensed the dew, just as the surface of a glass of iced water condenses moisture. The ponds are always made artificially in the first instance, and puddled with clay and chalk.

In the notes to a recent edition of "White's Selborne," edited by Professor L.C. Miall, F.R.S., and Mr. W. Warde Fowler, a considerable amount of information on dew ponds is appended to the passage quoted above, but the source of supply still remains obscure. The best dew ponds seem to be on the Sussex Downs, where far more fog and cooling cloud accumulates than on the more inland chalk ranges, because of the nearness of the sea. Near Inkpen Beacon, in Hampshire, there is a dew pond at a height of nine hundred feet, which is never dry, though it waters a large flock of sheep.[3] Dew ponds are often found where there are no other sources of supply, such as the wash coming from a road. Probably if the site for one had to be selected, it should be where the mists gather most thickly and the heaviest dews are shed, local knowledge only possessed by a few shepherds. I have driven up through rain on to the top of the downs, and found there that no rain was falling, but mists lying in the hollows like smoke. Mr. Clement Reid, F.R.S., has added to the "Selborne" notes his own experiences of the best sites for dew ponds. They should, he thinks, be sheltered on the south-west by an overhanging tree. In those he is acquainted with the tree is often only a stunted, ivy-covered thorn or oak, or a bush of holly, or else the southern bank is high enough to give shadow. "When one of these ponds is examined in the middle of a hot summer's day," he adds, "it would appear that the few inches of water in it could only last a week. But in early morning, or towards evening, or whenever a sea-mist drifts in, there is a continuous drip from the smooth leaves of the overhanging tree. There appears also to be a considerable amount of condensation on the surface of the water itself, though the roads may be quite dry and dusty. In fact, whenever there is dew on the grass the pond is receiving moisture."

Though this is evidently the case, no one has explained how it comes about that the pond surface receives so very much more moisture than the grass. The heaviest dew or fog would not deposit an inch, or even two inches, of water over an area of grass equal to that of the pond. None of the current theories of dew deposits quite explain this very interesting question. Two lines of inquiry seem to be suggested, which might be pursued side by side. These are the quantities distilled or condensed on the ponds, and the means by which it is done; and secondly, the kind of tree which, in Gilbert White's phrase, forms the best "alembic" for distilling water from fog at all times of the year. It seems certain that the tree is an important piece of machinery in aid of such ponds, though many remain well supplied without one.

[1] Thomas Elliot, who for some twenty years was shepherd and general manager for one of my father's tenants at Childrey.

[2] Full details of the cost and method of making dew ponds, as well as other information about them, are contained in the prize essay of the late Rev. J. Clutterbuck, Rector of Long Wittenham, in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society. Vol. I., Sec.S. Part 2.

[3] In the Isle of Wight, on Brightstone Downs, about 400 feet above the sea, is a dew pond with a concrete bottom, which has never run dry for thirty years.