JUNE 231 



though this is a point that cannot be finally decided for about 

 a year. If the tannin is good, behold a new industry ! But any 

 land will grow docks- -plant them once, and a dozen crops might 

 be taken in succession. Will not this fact be apt to bring down 

 the price of tannin to a point at which it would barely pay to 

 extract ? 



June 12. Yesterday the land was still too wet to work on, 

 but the morning proved fine and breezy. While attending the 

 funeral of an old friend, Mrs. Scudamore, the widow of the Rev. 

 W. E. Scudamore, the author of 'Notitia Eucharistica,' a most 

 learned man, and for many years the loved and respected rector 

 of this parish, I noticed two hawks hovering near the cemetery. 

 So clear and blue was the sky that, although they were soaring 

 high in heaven, I could almost see each feather of their wings. 

 I trust that they are going to build in the tower of the church 

 again, as they did for several years in succession, but for aught I 

 know this may be another pair. Hawks do not last long in 

 Norfolk, as the gamekeepers wage a perpetual war against them. 

 To my mind they are the most beautiful of all birds, if the most 

 relentless. Also they seem to be ubiquitous. I never remember 

 travelling in any part of the world where I did not find a 

 hawk, or his big brother, the eagle. In Iceland you see them, 

 splendid solemn fellows, sitting in silence on desolate crags, among 

 which the ravens croak incessantly ; in Egypt they sail from pylon 

 to pylon, and the Nile tourist pots them perched on the empty 

 granite shrine of Horus, of whom for thousands of years they were 

 worshipped as the incarnate symbol. But I think that South 

 Africa is par excellence the land of hawks, where I fancy they 

 migrate from place to place in search of food. At least I can 

 remember riding into a forest grove in the Transvaal where they 

 were gathered by the hundred, every tree being brown with them, 

 and it is impossible to suppose that one district could support so 

 many for more than a few days. 



Mrs. Scudamore, who was buried yesterday, when she was 



