86 AUTUMNAL LEAVES. 



flashes the bright gold of the blossoming Dwarf 

 Furze. Tall forms of Bracken from six to ten 

 feet high fringe our path and spread away from 

 us gracefully on either hand. Presently on the 

 open forest our bridle-path divides into two, and 

 we take the right-hand way, and then almost 

 immediately we take another and sharper turning 

 to the right, leaving a Beech wood on our left- 

 hand side and passing by the margin of a forest 

 pool fringed by tall forms of Bracken. Following 

 for some distance a course due west we skirt by 

 a path, through Bracken ten feet high, the entire 

 length of the Wilverley plantation and beyond 

 it look down towards the south-west, into the 

 Holmsley Valley. 



Scott used to say that this little valley of 

 Holmsley reminded him of the moorlands of his 

 beloved country, and he greatly admired and was 

 much attached to it. It was doubtless either the 

 scenery of this part of the New Forest now 

 greatly spoiled by the denudation of trees and 

 by the invasion of the South- Western Railway, 

 whose lines run from east to west across it 

 or the magnificent woodlands that lie in Canterton 



