FROM THE HEART OF THE WOLDS. 209 



man, who makes a good end of it. Fitly, as some may think, 

 is a little hamlet near at hand called " World's End." 



Thus finishes our ramble from the heart of the Wolds. 

 Choosing a stream merely for the sake of a thread on which to 

 hang our few bright beads, a walk of some twenty-five miles at 

 most has led us from its birth to where it sluggishly creeps into 

 the German Ocean. It is itself a very young stream compared 

 with others in the kingdom which have cloven through many 

 yards of solid rock. This parvenu of ours, belonging to the 

 last great geologic formation, chalk, has merely had to eat out a 

 shallow track through soft banks. Not that it could not have 

 performed more marvellous feats in this way had the structure 

 of the country only given it an opportunity. The river Wily, in 

 Wilts, managed to cut its way down, upwards of eighty feet, and 

 developed a new course for itself, while the River Driftmen 

 and late Pleistocene animals were living in its district* The 

 remarks we have made during our ramble by the footsteps of 

 the beck may be taken as samples of the simple joys dear to a 

 lover of country life. A so-called dull district has purposely 

 been chosen to show that even it is capable of furnishing him 

 with wealth who will take the trouble necessary to dig out ore. 

 But little has been said of the flowers, of the stream; yet the 

 most unobservant eye must notice that a different vegetation 

 attends each different step of even so humble a stream as this. 

 Again, all the bird and animal life of a district is best seen by 

 such a stream. Weasels and stoats regularly hunt along its 

 banks ; moles, rats, and mice come day by day to drink of it, 

 just as all the large game of South Africa may be best seen and 

 shot at the water holes. A few years' investigation of any of 

 these divisions of nature by the side of such a stream will reveal 

 much that is unexpected and interesting. Ghosts, bogies, and 

 the supernatural generally have utterly vanished from this 

 commonplace district before schools and newspapers. Even 

 * Dawkins, Early Man in Britain (Macmillan, 1880), p. 232. 



