CHAPTEE VIII 



Hampshire, north and south A spot abounding in life Lyndhurst 

 A white spider Wooing spider's antics A New Forest little 

 boy Blonde gipsies The boy and the spider A distant world 

 of spiders Selborne and its visitors Selborne revisited An 

 owl at Alton A wagtail at the Wakes The cockerel and the 

 martin Heat at Selborne House crickets Gilbert White on 

 crickets A colony of field crickets Water plants Musk 

 mallow Girl buntings at Selborne Evening gatherings of 

 swifts at Selborne LocustidsB Thamnotrizon cinereus 

 English names wanted Black grasshopper's habits and dispo- 

 sition Its abundance at Selborne. 



IN the last chapter I got away succeeded in breaking 

 away, would perhaps be a better expression from that 

 favourite hunting-ground of mine farther south; and 

 the reader would perhaps care to know why a book 

 descriptive of days in Hampshire should be so much 

 taken up with days in one small corner of the county. 

 Hampshire is not a very large county compared with 

 some others : I have traversed it in this and in that 

 direction often enough to be pretty familiar with a 

 great deal of it, from the walled-round cornfield which 

 was once Roman Calleva to the Solent; and from the 

 beautiful wild Rother on the Sussex border to the Avon 

 in the west. There is much to see and know within these 

 limits : for all of those whose proper study is man, his 

 history and his works ; and for the archaeologist and for 



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