INTEODUCTION. 11 



here and there with wood, part perhaps of that great forest 

 mentioned by Leland reaching- from beside Portus Limenns in 

 Kent one himdred and twenty miles westward, '^ which/ writes 

 Plot, ' happily falls ont to be about this place/ The woods at 

 Nuneham are extensive, and the whole place is heavily timbered. 

 Sloping upwards from one of the most beautiful reaches of the 

 upper Thames, Nuneham in early summer, when its rich 

 meadows are golden with buttercups and its trees clad in their 

 freshest green, fairly teems with birds. Stock Doves in ex- 

 ceptional numbers, together with Owls, Kestrels, Jackdaws, 

 Starlings, Titmice, Nuthatches, Green Woodpeckers, and more 

 rarely the Greater and Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers, share the 

 holes and hollows in the old trees in the park. The open woods, 

 rich in undergrowth, abound with Nightingales, Wood Wrens, 

 and all our common woodland warblers, while the yews and 

 other thick evergreens in the gardens and walks, and the 

 beautiful wood of specimen conifers and rhododendrons known 

 as the Pinetum, must be a paradise to the Titmice in winter, 

 and tempt many a pair of the tiny Golden-crested Wrens to 

 hang their nests beneath the extremities of the drooping 

 branches. With these exceptions the woods in the county 

 are few, scattered, and generally small, though Bruern, Fyfield- 

 and Churchill-Heath Woods near Kingham are of considerable 

 extent, as also is Worton Wood ; and Wroxton, Sarsden, 

 Broughton, Great Tew, and many other parks abound so in 

 timber as to present a wooded appearance. 



The elevation of the county is varied, ranging from 120 to 

 800 feet. The Thames, where it leaves the county near 

 Henley, is 120 feet above the sea, its level rising to 190 feet at 

 Oxford, where it is joined by the Cherwell, and the latter 

 stream attaining an elevation of 300 feet at Banbmy. The 

 valley at Kingham near Chipping Norton is not less than a 

 hundred feet higher. In the north of the county, Wigginton 

 Heath rises to a height of about 650 feet, and Epwell Hill to 

 nearly another hundred feet. In West Oxon the high ridge of 

 land on the Warwickshire borders, and the outlying spurs of 

 the Cotswolds, have an elevation of nearly 8co feet, Shotover 

 Hill varies the level about Oxford, rising to about 370 feet 



