74 WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 



torn was not porous. Below the mouth of the coombe 

 the water has worn itself a channel quite six feet deep 

 in the chalk, washing out the flints that now lie at the 

 bottom. Hawthorn bushes bend over it, and great 

 briers, uncut since their first shoot was put forth ; 

 the elder, too, grows luxuriously, whose white flowers, 

 emitting a rich but sickly odour, the village girls still 

 gather to make elder-water to remove freckles. These 

 bushes hide the deep gully in which the current winds 

 its way so deep that no cattle can get down to drink. 



A cottage stands on the very edge a little farther 

 along ; the residents do not dip their water from the 

 running stream, but have made a small pool beside it, 

 with which, no doubt, it communicates, for the pool, 

 or " dipping-place," is ever full of cool, clear, limpid 

 water. The plan is not without its advantages, be- 

 cause the stream itself, though usually clear, is liable 

 to become foul from various causes such as a flood, 

 when it is white from suspended chalk, or from cattle 

 higher up above the gully coming to slake their thirst 

 and stirring the sandy grit of the bottom. But the 

 little pool long remains clear, because the water from 

 the stream to enter it has to strain itself through the 

 narrow partition of chalky rubble. 



So limpid is the current in general that the idea of 

 seeing trout presently when it shall widen out naturally 

 arises. But before then the soil changes, and clay and 

 loam spoil the clean, sandy, or gravelly bottom trout 

 delight in. In one such stream hard by, however, the 

 experiment of keeping trout has been tried, and with 



