102 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



warm brown. The only brown I know in English 

 wood-scape that reminds me quite of this for sober- 

 ness and warmth and evenness of tinge is the brown 

 of great masses of dead brake-fern in full daylight. 

 But the shades are different. I never quite realised 

 the colour called hazel till one December afternoon 

 I saw the hazel coppices in this most beautiful, quiet 

 dress. The hazel-brown comes in the half-hour be- 

 fore dusk. Then through the dusk the monochrome 

 grows, and when one reaches home at five o'clock 

 or so in midwinter it is complete. Everything is 

 clear-cut against the light quarter of the sky for 

 a little time, and next the drape of night, and 

 everything vague and mingled. 



The best winter evenings are, I think, these hard 

 and frosty ones, for they have the clearer skies. The 

 wood pictures are drawn and etched on the sky with 

 a firmer touch than on most evenings. The blacks 

 are stronger. I am fond of the walk home across 

 the common among the woods on a hard frosty 

 evening, if only for the spiral flights of the linnet 

 flock. This is one of the most beautiful sights in 

 a year of small English birds. As the sun is dipping 

 behind the pencilled, waved line of hills from the 

 river Test into Wiltshire Quarley Clumps and Dane- 

 bury among them the linnet flock will sweep and 

 wind high above the rough blackthorns and scrub 

 of the " rows " on this high common. Winding 

 threads and ribbons of linnets for ten minutes or a 



