244 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



since, as they tell us, the affinities of the South Hamp- 

 shire people, of the New Forest district especially, 

 have not yet been worked out. Not being an anthro- 

 pologist I can't help them; and am even inclined to 

 think that they have left undone some of the things 

 which they ought to have done. The complaint was 

 made in a former chapter that we had no monograph 

 on fleas to help us ; it may be made, too, with regard 

 to the human race in Hampshire. The most that one 

 can do in such a case, since man cannot be excluded 

 from the subjects which concern the naturalist, is to 

 record one's own poor little unscientific observations, 

 and let them go for what they are worth. 



There is little profit in looking at the towns'-people. 

 The big coast towns have a population quite as hetero- 

 geneous as that of the metropolis ; even in a compara- 

 tively small rural inland town, like Winchester, one 

 would be puzzled to say what the chief characteristics of 

 the people were. You may feel in a vague way that 

 they are unlike the people of, say, Guildford, or Canter- 

 bury, or Reading, or Dorchester, but the variety in 

 forms and faces is too great to allow of any definite 

 idea. The only time when the people even in a town 

 can be studied to advantage in places like Winchester, 

 Andover, &c., is on a market day, or on a Saturday 

 afternoon, when the villagers come in to do their 

 marketing. I have said, in writing of Somerset and 

 its people, that the gentry, the landowners, and the 

 wealthy residents generally, are always in a sense 



