CHAPTER VII 



ON SELBORNE COMMON 



NEVER does Selborne Common look more attrac- 

 tive than when the trees are painted in their 

 autumn tints. I was wandering lately over the en- 

 chanted ground, so dear to Gilbert White, when the 

 beeches in the Hanger were in all their glory and the 

 thorns were loaded with scarlet fruit. " If," wrote the 

 great naturalist in his journal, under 26th October 1783, 

 " a masterly landscape painter was to take our hanging 

 woods in their autumnal colours, persons unacquainted 

 with the countiy would object to the strength and deep- 

 ness of the tints and would pronounce that they were 

 heightened and shaded beyond nature." " Wonderful, 

 indeed, and lovely " I thought the colouring as I made 

 my way along the pathways, through the bracken, and 

 tried to conjure up in my mind the many associations 

 of Selborne Common with the life and interests of the 

 immortal naturalist. 



The down, or sheepwalk, known as Selborne Common 

 is, as White said, " a pleasing park-like spot, jutting 

 out on the verge of the hill country, where it begins to 

 break down into the plains." It runs from the top of 

 Selborne Hanger to the village of Newton Valence, about 

 a mile distant, and is as quiet and undisturbed as it 

 was in the eighteenth century. Rabbits scuttle about 

 in every direction, and a number of pheasants wild 



68 



