CHAPTER XV 



WINTER IN WEST DOWNLAND 



A good-bye to towns — Charm of West Downland in winter — A 

 cow-boy singing and a missel-thrush — A vein of stupidity 

 — Anecdotes — Bats eating bacon— Eiding to Ringmer and a 

 downland man's ignorance — Chilgrove — Gilbert White — Yew, 

 juniper, and clematis — A wooded combe — A host of wood- 

 pigeons — Beautiful downland scenery — Fallen beech-leaves on 

 snow — South Harting — Conclusion. 



It would not be appropriate, nor even seemly, that a 

 book of this sort, treating of rural scenes and wild lite, 

 in which, while keeping a vigilant eye on what my 

 pen was doing, I have yet allowed it to hint or sug- 

 gest, in a few faintly-traced lines, what communion 

 with nature really is to me — it would not be proper 

 that it should conclude with an account of any town, 

 and the writer's adventures, the thoughts and expe- 

 riences that afflicted him, during his sojourn in it. 



A friend of mine, a downland rector, expressed his 

 disappointment at finding that this book was not 

 what he had thought it was intended to be — a Flora 

 of the South Downs. It was true, he said, that plants 

 had not interested him, and that the only wild flowers 

 he could give a name to when he saw them were the 

 daisy and dandelion ; still it would have been a satis- 



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