n 4 SURREY SCENES 



and wood-pigeons were all uttering their spring notes. 

 The deer were lying asleep, some of the stags stretched 

 out with feet straight before them, and their chins 

 resting on their knees, like a dog on a doorstep. 

 Everything was happy, careless, and contented. The 

 fringe of the wood, in the centre of which the herons 

 were silently brooding their young, was alive with the 

 melody of birds and the movements of the smaller 

 beasts with which, in addition to the red and fallow- 

 deer, the park is now so abundantly stocked. Swarms 

 of rabbits, old and young, were moving or sitting-up 

 in the tussocks of dead grass among the birch-stems, 

 wood-pigeons glided from tree to tree, so tame as to be 

 almost indifferent to our intrusion, and the song of the 

 wood-warbler, the chiff-chaff, the cuckoo, and the 

 chaffinch, came from all parts of the grove. Within 

 the outer circle of birch, the character of the wood 

 changes. Tall young oaks and dark spruce-firs, with 

 scattered clumps of rhododendron, take the place of the 

 thick and feathery birch ; and the song of the smaller 

 birds was lost in the harsh and angry cries of the 

 disturbed herons. A carrion-crow flapped from her 

 nest on a dead oak, and flew with loud and warning 

 croak through the centre of the wood ; and a trespass- 

 ing deer, springing from its form in which it was lying 

 concealed like an Exmoor stag, crashed through the 

 thick growth of rhododendrons, and added to the alarm 

 of the colony. Four male herons came sweeping high 

 above the oaks in rapid circles to seek the cause of the 

 disturbance ; and at the same moment the first of the 



