144 WITH THE WOODLANDERS. 



sanctuaries for wild creatures are such no longer. 

 The blackcock, the black-grouse, has left them, 

 never, I fear, to return. Where only narrow 

 woodland - tracks ran through, and the stems of 

 the furze-bushes were covered at the roots with 

 heather, heath, and whortleberry-shrubs so thickly 

 that on summer nights I have rested there, most 

 luxuriously, on a green couch of nature's own pro- 

 viding, wide paths have been recently cut in 

 squares. I mean, the fir - woods are intersected 

 by wide tracks as though they were allotment- 

 gardens. Even the jays, one can see, are dis- 

 gusted with such doings. What a vast difference 

 there is between heath and heather ! Heather 

 makes, with its delicate blossoms of blush - white 

 and purple, a garden of the wild moors; heath, 

 when it is breast - high and old very old and 

 wiry causes one to exclaim forcibly if, to put 

 the thing mildly, one has to force one's way 

 through it. It flies back and switches you in the 

 face most unpleasantly. 



At one time I could find snipes in any meadow 

 that had rills running through it, natural drains, 

 within five minutes' walk of Dorking town. No 



