6 ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 



in the heart of Germany than within forty miles 

 of London, he reaches a more elevated country, 

 where highly- cultivated farms and an occasional 

 elm tree denote the presence of a richer soil ; and 

 this is again succeeded by a wide tract of ferrugi- 

 nous sand, assuming the most striking forms of 

 hill and valley, or spreading into open heaths. 

 Nothing can exceed the picturesque beauty of 

 certain portions of this district ; eminences cloth- 

 ed with heather and gorse, and crowned with 

 Scotch fir and holly, enclose valleys intersected 

 by clear running brooks, whose course, here rapid 

 and noisy, rushes over rocks and ridges of sand- 

 stone ; there, taking a sudden turn, and stealing 

 away in a deep and silent current, half undermines 

 the overhanging banks, ungratefully exposing the 

 gnarled roots of the old oak trees, that seem to 

 stretch their branches in a protecting attitude over 

 the stream ; altogether strongly reminding one of 

 those delicious bits of sylvan scenery which are 

 scattered, with such a lavish hand, through the 

 magic pages of Bewick. 



Then come the Downs, the famous South 

 Downs, which White of Selborne was wont to call 

 "a magnificent chain of mountains," stretching 

 across the county in a south-easterly direction, 

 until they reach the sea in the neighbourhood of 



