A ' Gip'-Trap. 67 



jog homewards along the lane, but are ever in the 

 hedges. 



There were plenty in the double-mounds to which 

 we had access ; but the shepherd, who had learned 

 his craft on the Downs, said that the nuts grew there 

 in such immense quantities as determined us to see 

 them. Sitting on the felled ash under the shade of the 

 hawthorn hedge, where the butcher-birds every year 

 used to stick the humble-bees on the thorns, he 

 described the route a mere waggon track and the 

 situation of the largest copses. 



The waggon track we found crossed the elevated 

 plains close under and between the Downs, following 

 at the foot, as it seemed, for an endless distance the 

 curve of a range. The slope bounded the track on 

 one side : on the other it was enclosed by a low bank- 

 covered with dead thorn thickly entangled, which 

 enclosed the cornfields. The space between the hedge 

 and the hill was as far as we could throw one of the 

 bleached flints lying on the sward. It was dotted 

 with hawthorn trees and furze, and full of dry brown 

 grass. A few scattered firs, the remnants of extinct 

 plantations, grew on the slope, and green ' fairy rings ' 

 marked it here and there. 



These fairy rings have a somewhat different 

 appearance from the dark green semicircles found in 



