WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. 119 



something indistinct sitting on their haunches, which 

 something at once disappeared, and the excitement 

 ceased. But these things are said to have happened 

 a long time ago. 



So, also, there is a memory of a man digging stone 

 in a quarry and distinctly hearing the strokes of a 

 pick beneath him. When he wheeled his barrow the 

 subterranean quarryman wheeled his, and shortly after 

 he had shot the stones out there came a rumbling from 

 below as if the other barrow had been emptied. The 

 very quarry is pointed out where this extraordinary 

 phenomenon took place. It is curious how a story of 

 this kind, something like which is, I think, told of the 

 Harz Mountains, should have got localized in a lime- 

 stone quarry so far apart in distance and character. 

 How well I remember the ancient labourer who told 

 me this legend as a boy ! It is easy to philosophize 

 on it now, and speculate upon the genesis of the tale, 

 which may have originated in a cavernous hollow 

 resounding to the tools ; but then it was a reality, 

 and I recollect ahvays giving a wide berth to that 

 quarry at night. As the old man told it, it was indeed 

 hardly a legend ; for he could disclose every detail, 

 and what has here occupied a few sentences took him 

 the best part of an hour to relate. 



Now and then the western clouds after the sunset 

 assume a shape resembling that of a vast extended 

 wing, as of a gigantic bird in full flight the extreme 

 tip nearly reaching the zenith, the body of the bird 

 just below the horizon. The resemblance is sometimes 



