THE LAND 



MOST of this book is an account of wild life and 

 sport in north-west Hampshire, a district of large 

 woods and clear streams and great rolling chalk 

 downs, where my family has been settled on the 

 land for generations. The woodland has always ap- 

 pealed to me more than any other place, but a good 

 many passages relate to the last five years spent 

 largely in the pleasant village of Oakley, fourteen 

 or fifteen miles east of my own district. Portions of 

 the book have in substance appeared in the Standard, 

 and I thank the owner and the editor for allowing 

 me to reprint them here. I hope that what I have 

 said in the last chapter about the peasantry and the 

 small farmers will not be taken as harsh or hopeless. 

 I have absolute sympathy with those who wring a 

 living and independence out of a few acres of English 

 soil. The small man in land is invaluable in our 

 country. 



Where he sternly endures in hard conditions he is 



vii 



