94 SURREY SCENES 



run off, and the troutlets, grown into half-pound trout, 

 are transported to the deep waters of the larger pools. 

 These are divided from the breeding-pond by a 

 " bottom," or a moist, green, squashy river of short 

 grass, haunted by blackbirds, in which the stream is 

 hardly visible, and often disappears below the surface, 

 or is distributed among narrow strips of water-meadow. 

 In the river-valleys of the lower ground, these 

 " bottoms " are deep and oozy swamps, where red mud 

 and slime stand and stink among the alder-stumps, and 

 " quakes," or reedy jungles, spread in the open ground. 

 The contrast between the sunny and the sunless bank 

 remains: the latter dark, smooth, and steep, with a 

 regular growth of birch, the former rugged and broken, 

 studded with contorted oaks and ancient hollies. Flat- 

 roofed caves lie under the oak-roots, in which sand is 

 for ever dropping from roof to floor, like the dribble 

 of the hour-glass ; even the wren hopping and singing 

 from root to root beneath the cave dislodges tiny 

 avalanches of sand. Under a hazel -bush lay a pool in 

 miniature, an everlasting spring, fresh from the hidden 

 cisterns of the hill. True springs like this are the 

 nearest approach in rural England to the little 

 "fountains" gushing from the rock, so dear to the 

 poets of old Greece and Italy. The smallest of the 

 " Waggoners' Wells " l for these, like all ponds and 

 pools, however remote, have their distinguishing name 

 could scarcely claim Horace's sacrifice of a kid ; but 



1 Part of this chain of pools lies within the Hampshire border. 



