THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS 275 



knowing that the kestrel is a protected species. This 

 grove, its central tree decorated after the manner of a 

 modern woman with wings and carcasses of birds and 

 heads and tails of little beasts was like a small tran- 

 script of any one of those vast woods and forests in which 

 I had spent so many days in this same downland dis- 

 trict. The curse and degradation were on it, and from 

 that time the sight of it was unpleasant, even when so 

 far removed as to appear nothing but a blue cloud-like 

 mound, no bigger than a man's hand, on the horizon. 

 There is something wanting in all these same great 

 woods I have spoken of which spoils them for me and 

 in some measure, perhaps, for those who have any feel- 

 ing for Nature's wildness in them. It has been to me 

 like an oppression during my rambles, year after year, 

 in such woods as Savernake, Collingbourne, Longleat, 

 Cranbourne Chase, Fonthill, Great Ridge Wood, 

 Bentley and Groveley Woods— all within or on the 

 borders of the Wiltshire down country. This feeling 

 or sense of something wanting is stronger still in dis- 

 tricts where there are higher and rougher hills, a larger 

 landscape, and a wilder nature, as in the Quantocks — 

 in the great wooded slopes and summits above Over 

 Stowey, for example ; the loss, in fact, is everywhere 

 in all woodland and incult places, but I need not go 

 away from these Wiltshire woods already named. 

 They are great enough, one would imagine, to satisfy 

 any person's love of wildness and solitude. Here you 

 will find places in appearance like a primitive forest, 

 where the trees have grown as they would for genera- 



