82 NATURE IN DOWNLAND 



however sorry he may be that all these fine birds 

 are being exterminated throughout the country. If 

 he is not himself a collector he will be sure to have 

 a friend or neighbour who is, and who will be de- 

 lighted to have a Sussex-killed raven, spoonbill, honey 

 buzzard, or stone curlew sent him as a present. 



This he said to me in explanation of his motives 

 in shooting a buzzard. 



I will here quote a passage touching on the bird 

 life of the South Downs, in the early years of this 

 century, from M. A. Lower's account of the shepherd's 

 life in his Contributions to Literature (London, 1854). 

 " Here are," Lower says, " the very words of one 

 now dead, who had himself carried the shepherd's 

 crook and worn the shepherd's greatcoat for many 

 years on these hills : 



"'The life of a shepherd in my young days was 

 not the same as it is now. . . . You very seldom see 

 a shepherd's hut on our hills in these times, but 

 formerly every shepherd had one. Sometimes it was 

 a sort of cave dug in the side of a bank or link, and 

 had large stones inside. It was commonly lined with 

 heath or straw. The part aboveground was covered 

 with sods of turf, or heath, or straw, or boughs of 

 hawth. In rough, shuckish weather, the shepherd 

 used to turn into his hut and lie by the hour to- 

 gether, only looking out once in a while to see that 

 the sheep didn't stray too far. Here he was safe 

 and dry, however the storm might blow overhead, 



