1 84 ON SURREY HILLS. 



One great drawback there is in the danker portions 

 of the wood midges swarm up in clouds at every 

 step you take. You can hardly distinguish the fero- 

 cious poisonous atoms, but you feel them horribly ; 

 and they drive you almost frantic. Many of the wild 

 creatures have owed their lives to those minute in- 

 sects settling on the nose of a shooter just as he had 

 put the gun to his shoulder. And then there is the 

 stoat fly that swarms in this locality, to the torment 

 of both man and beast, a shining, grey-looking insect, 

 sometimes three-quarters of an inch in length, that 

 first hums softly round you and then settles, light as 

 thistledown, on some unprotected part, the neck by 

 preference. Before you are sure what is the matter 

 he has filled himself from your veins like any leech. 

 These and other annoyances will exasperate you be- 

 yond endurance if you explore here for any length of 

 time. 



Even the rabbits and the hedgehogs suffer tor- 

 ments ; in fact, some are bitten to death, literally. 

 The pursuit of knowledge is ever attended with diffi- 

 culties. A great fuss is made about the mosquitoes 

 in tropical climates. I cannot believe they are at all 

 to be compared with the "stoats" and midges of 



