86 THE PINE AND HEATHER COUNTRY 



Woods and Forests ; but though the price now fetched 

 by the wood bears out the economical side of Cobbett's 

 criticism, the trees add much to the beauty and char- 

 acter of the forest. " This lonely domain," says Gil- 

 bert White, " is an agreeable haunt for many sorts of 

 wild fowls, which not only frequent it in winter, but 

 breed there in summer, such as lapwings, snipes, wild 

 ducks, and, as I have discovered within these last few 

 years, teals." During a spring walk in the forest, 

 it was the writer's fortune to find the nest of every 

 bird which White mentions as breeding there, except 

 that of the black grouse, which, though introduced for 

 a time, has become nearly as rare as in his days. At 

 the northern end of the forest, near Walldon Hill, is a 

 marsh, not a mere swamp in the peats, but such a 

 marsh as hunted outlaws may have sheltered in, over 

 which the flame of the will-o'-the-wisp may still dance 

 on summer nights ; a wide sheet of black water, with 

 dead white limbs of drowned trees standing out from 

 it, and winding labyrinths of dwarf alders covered with 

 wet mosses and hanging lichens, and mats of bright 

 green grass so firmly tangled that a boy can walk 

 on them, and outside these quaking platforms thick 

 beds of reed. This is the home and nursery of the 

 wild fowl of the forest, where duck and teal, dabchicks 

 and water-hens, bring up their young broods till the 

 helpless time of flapperhood is over. But the ducks 

 and teal do not nest in the marsh ; and we found 

 White's observations exactly true, the teals nesting at a 

 considerable distance from the water, and the wild 



