58 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



years past. With a farm-house not many minutes' 

 walk from the forest for a home, I have here spent long 

 weeks at a time, rambling in the woods every day and 

 all day long, for the most time out of sight of human 

 habitations, and always with the feeling that I was in 

 my own territory, where everything was as Nature made 

 it and as I liked it to be. Never once in all my 

 rambles did I encounter that hated being, the collector, 

 with his white, spectacled town face and green butterfly 

 net. In this out-of-the-way corner of the Forest one 

 could imagine the time come when this one small piece 

 of England which lies between the Avon and Southamp- 

 ton Water will be a sanctuary for all rare and beautiful 

 wild life and a place of refreshment to body and soul 

 for all men. 



The richest, fullest time of the year is when June is 

 wearing to an end, when one knows without the 

 almanac that spring is over and gone. Nowhere in 

 England is one more sensible of the change to fullest 

 summer than in this low-lying, warmest corner of 

 Hampshire. 



The cuckoo ceases to weary us with its incessant call, 

 and the nightingale sings less and less frequently. The 

 passionate season is well-nigh over for the birds ; their 

 fountain of music begins to run dry. The cornfields 

 and waste grounds are everywhere splashed with the 

 intense scarlet of poppies. Summer has no rain in all 

 her wide, hot heavens to give to her thirsty fields, and 

 has sprinkled them with the red fiery moisture from 



