264 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



it may not be so — to the artist, for example, in search 

 of something to draw. We have each our distinct 

 interests, aims, trades, or what you like : that which 

 I seek adds nothing, and takes nothing from his picture, 

 and is consequently negligible. We cannot escape 

 the reflex effect of our own little vocations — our pre- 

 occupations with one side of things, one aspect of 

 nature. Their life is to me their beauty, or the chief 

 element in it, without which they would indeed be 

 melancholy places. It refreshes me more than the 

 shade of the great leafy roof on a burning day. On 

 this account, because of the life in them, I prefer the 

 clumps on the lower hills. They grow more luxuri- 

 antly, often with much undergrowth, sometimes sur- 

 rounded with dense thickets of thorn, furze, and 

 bramble. These are attractive spots to wild birds, 

 and when not guarded by a gamekeeper form little 

 refuges where even the shy persecuted species may 

 breed in comparative security. It is with a sense of 

 positive relief that I often turn my back on some 

 great wood or forest where one naturally goes in quest 

 of woodland species, even after many disappointments, 

 to spend a day, or many days, with the feathered in- 

 habitants of one of these isolated groves. 



The birds, too, may be better observed in these 

 places ; they are less terrified at the appearance of the 

 human form than in woods and forests where the 

 pheasant is preserved, and man means (to the bird's 

 mind) a gamekeeper with a gun in his hand. For, in 

 many cases, especially in Wiltshire, the hill-groves 



