The Open Air 



almost step on a crow, and it is difficult to guess 

 what he can have been about so earnestly, for search 

 reveals nothing no dead lamb, hare, or carrion, or 

 anything else is visible. Rooks, of course, are seen, 

 and larks, and once or twice in a morning a magpie, 

 seldom seen in the cultivated and preserved valley. 

 There are more partridges than rigid game preservers 

 would deem possible where the overlooking, if done 

 at all, is done so carelessly. Partridges will never 

 cease out of the land while there are untouched 

 downs. Of all southern inland game, they afford 

 the finest sport ; for sport in its genuine sense cannot 

 be had without labour, and those who would get 

 partridges on the hills must work for them. Shot 

 down, coursed, poached, killed before maturity in 

 the corn, still hares are fairly plentiful, and couch 

 in the furze and coarse grasses. Rabbits have much 

 decreased; still there are some. But the larger fir 

 copses, when they are enclosed, are the resort of all 

 kinds of birds of prey yet left in the south, and, 

 perhaps, more rare visitors are found there than 

 anywhere else. Isolated on the open hills, such a 

 copse to birds is like an island in the sea. Only a 

 very few pheasants frequent it, and little effort is 

 made to exterminate the wilder creatures, while 

 they are continually replenished by fresh arrivals. 

 Even ocean birds driven inland by stress of weather 

 seem to prefer the downs to rest on, and feel safer 

 there. 



The sward is the original sward, untouched, un- 

 ploughed, centuries old. It is that which was 

 formed when the woods that covered the hills were 

 cleared, whether by British tribes whose markings 

 are still to be found, by Roman smiths working the 

 ironstone (slag is sometimes discovered), by Saxon 



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