NIGHTINGALE EOAD. 53 



Wooden cottages, wooden barns, wooden mills are 

 also characteristic. 



Mouchers come along the road at all times and 

 seasons, gathering sacksfull of dandelions in spring, 

 digging up fern roots and cowslip mars for sale, 

 cutting briars for standard roses, gathering water- 

 cresses and mushrooms, and in the winter cutting 

 rushes. 



There is a rook with white feathers in the wing 

 which belongs to an adjacent rookery, and I have 

 observed a blackbird also streaked with white. One 

 January day, when the snow was on the ground and 

 the frost was sharp, when the pale sun seemed to 

 shine brightest round the rim of the disk, as if there 

 were a band of stronger light there, I saw a white 

 animal under a heap of poles by the wayside, near 

 the great hedge I have mentioned. It immediately 

 concealed itself, but, thinking that it was a ferret 

 gone astray, I waited, and presently the head and 

 neck were cautiously protruded. 



I made the usual call with the lips, but the creature 

 instantly returned to cover. I waited again, hiding 

 this time, and after an interval the creature moved 

 and hastened away from the poles, where it was, in a 

 measure, exposed, to the more secure shelter of some 

 bushes. Then I saw that it was of a clear white, 

 while so-called white ferrets are usually a dingy 

 yellow, and the white tail was tipped with black. 

 From these circumstances, and from the timidity and 

 anxious desire to escape observation, I could only 

 conclude that it was a white stoat. 



Stoats, as remarked previously, are numerous in 



