LETTERS TO HON. LADY HIGGINSON 175 



my gratitude by sending you anything worth 

 reading. Don't believe that I write too much, 

 the fact being that when I can get out I do not 

 write nearly so much as I ought, but it is also 

 true that there is hardly a day in which I 

 cannot find some all but absolutely necessary 

 writing, enough to fill up the whole of my waking 

 hours ; this I look upon in my crippled condition 

 as the greatest blessing, but it certainly does 

 very seriously interfere with my reading no end 

 of books that I feel I ought to read. . . .' 



To the same. 



' December 13, 1892. 



' . . . You ask why there are no Crows at 

 Bournemouth, and rather surprise me ; if you 

 mean Books, they are probably feeding in the 

 water meadows and on the ploughed lands of 

 the Avon and Stour valleys and roosting near 

 their feeding-grounds, but a good many used to 

 nest in and about Bournemouth ; as for Crows 

 2)roprement dits every man's hand is against 

 them, but there was a nest generally in a scrap 

 of pine wood to the right of the road just before 

 you come to the dip to Boscombe. There are not 



