, THE WOODLANDS IN MA Y 145 



wood, or knows the delight of walking for hours 

 where the low sky never shows between the distant 

 trunks, and the sound of the labour of the field does 

 not penetrate. Yet there are still many counties rich 

 in forest scenery, even in the south ; and there is no 

 need to visit the famous cluster of great estates in 

 the Midlands, where the woods of Clumber, Welbeck, 

 and Mansfield unite to cover the site of the old 

 Sherwood Forest with an unbroken tract of woodland, 

 in order to realize the full-dress beauty of the early 

 spring. Hampshire, for example, may claim, apart 

 from the New Forest area, a foremost place among the 

 woodland counties of the south. Of its million acres, 

 a hundred thousand are covered by permanent and 

 ancient wood, not sprinkled in scattered patches, but 

 deep and connected areas of trees and copse, in which 

 timber, large and small, is regarded as the staple crop, 

 with stated times for cutting and harvest, equally with 

 the produce of the meadow or the field. Trees are 

 native to the soil. On the uplands between the deep 

 and fertile valleys of the Itchen and the Test, the 

 transition from natural woodland to the spreading 

 forests, which owe their present form to human care, 

 may yet be traced. The down stands thick with 

 ancient and self-sown hawthorns, fragrant with the 

 heavy perfume of the May-blossom, and interspersed 

 with tall patches of gorse and feathery birch, among 

 which the partridges nest, and the young plovers, 

 driven by the drought from the open downs, seek food 

 and shelter. In the woodlands beyond, each and every 



