88 A KENTISH PARISH 



But we own to being sceptical as to these tales, for 

 water is the great want of the parish ; and, as may be 

 gathered from what has been said elsewhere, nobody 

 has much reason to complain of improvements. 



Indeed a good third of Oakenhurst is never likely 

 to repay reclaiming, unless the day shall come when 

 speculative land-jobbers shall cut it up into lots for 

 suburban country-seats when the expanding metropolis 

 has been brought a dozen of miles nearer. We can 

 ourselves remember the time when hawks and gipsies 

 had their haunts elsewhere on sites that are covered 

 by semi-detached villas. But in the meantime, thanks 

 to our charts and copses and hedgerows, hawks and 

 owls of the more ordinary kinds are still common 

 enough with us. As you take your walks abroad, you 

 see the former sailing smoothly in circles overhead, or 

 poised on their pinions in tremulous flutter, before 

 swooping with outstretched talons on some victim ; or 

 if you chance to be strolling homewards in the dusk, 

 the great brown owls go floating silently past overhead, 

 their fine eye and ear far more intent on the move- 

 ments of their prey on the ground than on the form or 

 heavy footfall of the human intruder. The keepers 

 will tell you, of course, that we have a great superfluity 

 of vermin ; and no doubt the keepers are right. Yet 

 they would have less of our sympathy in the war that 

 they wage did we not know that they never can 

 exterminate their enemies. The foxes, of course, are 

 sacred, and we admire the hawk tribe. We like to 

 hear the harsh scream of the jay, and have a transient 



