i3 Wild Life in a Southern County 



the next lamb should fall and the ' spirit of the beast go 

 downwards.' Happy England, that experiences these things 

 so seldom, and even then so locally that barely one in ten 

 hears of or sees them ! 



The cattle of course suffer too; all day long files of 

 water-carts go down into the hollows where the springs 

 burst forth, and at such times half the work of the farm 

 consists in fetching the precious liquid perhaps a mile or 

 more. Even in ordinary summers there is often a difficulty 

 of this kind ; and there are some farmhouses whose water 

 for household uses has to be brought fully half a mile. Of 

 recent years more wells have been sunk, but there are still 

 too few for the purpose. The effect of water in determining 

 the settlements of human beings is clearly shown here. 

 You may walk mile after mile on the ridges and pass 

 nothing but a shed ; the houses are in the hollows, the 

 ' coombes ' or ' bottoms,' as they are called, where the 

 springs run. The villages on the downs are generally on 

 a c bourne,' or winter watercourse. 



In summer it is a broad winding trench with low green 

 banks, along whose bed you may stroll dry-shod, with the 

 yellow corn on either hand reaching above your head. A 

 few sedges here and there, and that peculiar whitened 

 appearance left when water has passed over vegetation, 

 betoken that once there was a stream. It is like the 

 watercourses and rivers of the East, which are the roads 

 of the traveller till the storm comes, and, lo ! in the 

 morning is a rushing flood. Near the village some water 

 is to be seen in the pond which has been deepened out to 

 hold it, and which is, too, kept up here by a spring. 



In winter the bourne often has the appearance of a 

 broad brook : you may observe where the current has 

 arranged the small flints washed in from the fields by the 



