138 HAMPSHIRE STREAMS AND WOODLANDS 



tortoise-shell butterflies, which flit from side to side of 

 the lane, alight alternately on leaves and twigs powdered 

 here with dust, there with crystals of hoar-frost. 



The scene in the water-meadows at Itchen Abbas, 

 above Winchester, on such a day in March at the be- 

 ginning of the hot dry spring of 1893, was in strange 

 contrast to that presented by the wintry waters in their 

 setting of iron-bound earth and icicle-fringe during the 

 great frosts at the opening of the year. Then the 

 warm and life-giving river supported by its bounty 

 thousands of strange and suffering birds, forced by 

 hunger to leave their native haunts, and to seek food 

 by the still unfrozen stream. Now the river and its 

 valley was peopled, not by hungry strangers, but by all 

 the wild creatures native to this chosen spot, not 

 struggling for existence, but enjoying the most 

 complete form of happiness known to animal life, 

 warmth, quiet, security, and plenty. There is, perhaps, 

 no district in the South of England where Nature has 

 done so much for man as in the upper valley of the 

 Itchen. The downs on either side shelter it from 

 rough winds, the parks and villages at their feet form a 

 continuous line of garden and spreading timber, and at 

 this season of the year the visitor may walk for miles 

 without ceasing to hear the cawing of the nesting rooks. 

 Rooks are still " free selectors " in our old-world 

 country, and their presence is a guarantee that the land 

 is good enough not only for man, but for the most civil- 

 ized and critical of bird-kind. But the exuberant life 

 of the valley is supported, not by the timbered parks 



