AUTUMN IN THE NEW FOREST 3 



and stoat; the hare too; the bright squirrel; the 

 dormouse and harvest-mouse; the bank- vole and the 

 wood-mouse. Even the common shrew and lesser 

 shrew, though they rarely come out by day, have a 

 reddish tinge on their fur. Water-shrew and water- 

 vole inhabit the banks of streams, and are safer 

 without such a colour ; the dark grey badger is strictly 

 a night rover. 



Sometimes about noon the clouds grow thin in 

 that part of the sky, low down, where the sun is, and 

 a pale gleam of sunlight filters through ; even a patch 

 of lucid blue sky sometimes becomes visible for a while : 

 but the light soon fades; after mid-day the dimness 

 increases, and before long one begins to think that 

 evening has come. Withal it is singularly mild. One 

 could almost imagine in this season of mist and wet 

 and soft airs in late November that this is a land 

 where days grew short and dark indeed, but where 

 winter comes not, and the sensation of cold is un- 

 known. It is pleasant to be out of doors in such 

 weather, to stand in the coloured woods listening to 

 that autumn sound of tits and other little birds wan- 

 dering through the high trees in straggling parties, 

 talking and calling to one another in their small 

 sharp voices. Or to walk by the Boldre, or, as some 

 call it, the Lymington, a slow, tame stream in summer, 

 invisible till you are close to it ; but now, in flood, 

 the trees that grow on its banks and hid it in summer 

 are seen standing deep in a broad, rushing, noisy river. 



