THROUGH THE YEAR 189 



of distant landscape. In May one sometimes sees 

 an oak wood in a hollow that appears red almost 

 bright red in some lights. 



Yet neither of these effects is so fine as the colouring 

 of some Sussex woods in January. From Horsham 

 many miles eastward there lies what is still a large 

 and almost continuous forest. It has various 

 names : St. Leonards, Tilgate, Worth and I sup- 

 pose Ashdown belongs to the same group. But 

 doubtless all this country of clay and sand was 

 clothed by one noble wood. In the hollows some 

 of them deep combes with trickling streams and 

 up their sides are beech and oak woods. When 

 the sun slants on these woods half an hour before 

 its setting they are suffused with a pink tinge. The 

 effect is transient, it is over in less than half an hour, 

 but whilst it lasts it is the most splendid woodland 

 colour scene I have seen and I have watched the 

 colouring of woods all my life. 



We must be above the pink wood to get the 

 colour, and look from the sun eastward to have the 

 full measure of it. I saw the whole face of a beech 

 wood, fifty acres of it, presented in this colour. The 

 evening was clear, and at sundown the west lit 

 with the broad bands of afterglow which are ranged 

 on the sky some evenings almost as definitely as 

 the colours of the rainbow. 



BULLFINCHES 



The bullfinch may be growing scarce in some 

 English places where once it was common, but in 



