CHAPTER XXV 



THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS 



History of the chalk hills — Hill-top groves — Their best aspect — 

 Abundance of wild life in them — Carrion-crows — Nesting 

 sparrow-hawks — The fascinating spectacle of the chase — 

 Long-eared owls — The owl as a practical joker — A keeper's 

 gibbet — The great woods of Wiltshire — What is lacking 

 in them. 



" f ■ ^HE groves were God's first temples," says 

 the poet; and viewed from the outside no 

 ■*■ groves are so like the temples made with 

 hands, Christian or pagan, as the "clumps," as they 

 are commonly called, growing on the chalk hills in 

 Sussex, Hampshire, Wilts, and Dorset. Nature's 

 way is to grow her larger trees on the lower levels, 

 and it is doubtful that the downs have ever had a 

 forest growth other than the kind which we find on 

 them now, composed mainly of the lesser native trees 

 — hawthorn, blackthorn, holly, juniper, and yews of 

 no great size, mixed with furze, bramble, and wild 

 clematis. All these plants are perpetually springing 

 into existence everywhere on the downs, and are 

 persistently fed down and killed by the sheep; take 

 the sheep away from any down, and in a few years, 

 as I have seen, it becomes an almost continuous 

 thicket, and that, one imagines, must have been its 

 original condition. We must suppose that man in 

 early times, or during the Neolithic period when he 



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