4 CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL 



army, when changing quarters, to rove as they passed in 

 search of game, and nobody said anything to them. 

 You will find this mentioned in Col. Hawker's diary, but 

 he, not being a gentleman, tried the same thing on when 

 he was in quarters and there he found himself wrong. 



Although, judged by modern standards, the quantity 

 of pheasants and partridges was not very great, there 

 was ample compensation, to a naturalist, in the existence 

 of several rare birds which still survived in the Elveden 

 district. It is true that the Great Bustard was on the 

 verge of extinction the last of the native stock was 

 killed in 1838 -but Montagu's Harriers were fairly 

 common in the fens near Feltwell, Buzzards still nested 

 in some of the big woods, and Ravens bred every year at 

 Elveden, where they survived until 1870. The vast 

 warrens of the " Breck," the woods and water-meadows 

 of the valley of the Little Ouse, and the neighbouring 

 Fenland between them made an ideal training ground 

 for a naturalist. 



The only detail that is known of Alfred Newton's 

 childhood is an incident which affected profoundly the 

 whole of his after life. When he was not more than five 

 or six years old, he was playing some riotous game with 

 one of his brothers in the library at Elveden and he fell 

 and hurt one of his knees. Little importance was 

 attached to it at first, but serious injury had been done 

 and his right leg never grew equally with the other, 

 causing him to be permanently lame. It may be that 

 this accident prevented him from following his brothers' 

 example and becoming a soldier, a career in which it may 

 safely be said that he would have won certain distinction. 

 But one very definite result which followed from his 

 lameness was the encouragement it gave him in his 

 earliest years to acquire habits of observation and 

 contemplation. As time went on and he was debarred 



