82 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



Here, on a still and misty autumn day, the redbreast's 

 song is one of the three or four chief, simple things 

 that make up the scene. It insists on notice, as do 

 the stone walls, the groups of red-brown cattle, the 

 mists, and here and there the lonely stone-built 

 cottages and byres. Life in these places in autumn 

 seems restricted to elemental simplicity, life both 

 human and wild. There is no sign in such high, 

 intensely quiet spots, when the whole earth and air 

 is steeped in the feeling of autumn, of the crammed 

 detail, of the incessant energy, that characterise life 

 in many phases in the plains and valleys below, 

 especially of summer life. A very few things seem 

 to make up the sum total of Nature, and the im- 

 pression is strong with us, as we pass the remote 

 farmhouses and tiny hamlets, that human life itself 

 can hardly be more complex here than in its environ- 

 ment. Stone walls never plastered or concreted, but 

 loosely piled up everywhere little pastures every- 

 where, with their browsing kine ; the redbreast singing 

 by each far-scattered cot and byre : these, with the 

 grey veil of autumn and the quietness which the 

 redbreast's song deeply emphasises, are the sole things 

 that meet eye and ear. I have driven miles among 

 the moorland homesteads and pastures, along sharp- 

 bending by-roads, and noticed nothing else not a 

 flower, an insect, not even starling or rook ; hardly 

 a tree to an acre, and never the sign of a hedgerow. 

 The redbreast plays a part in this act of the year, at 



