LOCALITY AND NA TURE, 169 



things. It is of such little things that great nature is 

 made. 



On the highest part of the Forest Ridge in Sussex, 

 where the soil is sandy and covered with heath, fern, and 

 fir trees, there never seemed to be any rooks. These 

 birds, so very characteristic of the country, appeared to 

 be almost absent over several miles. They went by some- 

 times, sailing down into the vale, but never stopped on 

 the hill, not even to walk the furrows behind the plough. 

 This would seem to indicate a remarkable absence of the 

 food they like, for it is very rare indeed for a piece of 

 ground to be fresh ploughed without rooks coming to it. 

 There were rookeries beneath in the plains where the 

 elms and beeches grew tall, but the birds never came 

 up to forage. Crows could be found, and stopped on 

 the hill all the year. Wood-pigeons, like the rooks, went 

 over, but did not stay. Starlings were not at all plenti- 

 ful ; blackbirds and thrushes were there, but not nearly 

 so numerous as is usually the case ; fieldfares and red- 

 wings drifted by in the winter, but never stopped. 

 Slow-worms lived in the sand under the heath, and 

 lizards, but no snakes and only a few adders. Inquiring 

 of an old man if there were many snakes about, he said 

 no ; the soil was too poor for them ; but in some places 

 down in the vale he had dug up a gallon of snakes' 

 eggs in the ' maxen.' The word was noticeable as a 

 survival of the old English ' mixen ' for manure heap. 

 Swallows, martins,and swifts abounded ; and as for insects, 

 they were countless honey-bees, wild bees, humble- 

 bees, varieties of wasps, butterflies an endless list. So 

 common a plant as the arum did not seem to exist ; on 

 the other hand, ferns literally made up the hedges, grow- 

 ing in such quantities as to take the place of the grasses 

 There was, too, a great variety of moss and fungi. The 



