CHAPTER XXII 



On a Hampshire Common 



Neither the angler nor the gunner in the 

 course of his sporting expeditions can often 

 in the British Isles come upon a spot richer 

 in bird, flower, and insect life than Bransbury 

 Common in the delicious valley of the Test. 

 It fell to my lot to spend three or four days 

 there during the may-fly season — -glorious days 

 of crowded life indeed they were — and the 

 spirit of the collector and naturalist could not 

 but assert itself now and again at the expense 

 of the angler. Bransbury Common is a wild 

 and marshy tract of some hundreds of acres, 

 lying in the midst of a delightfully wooded, 

 undulating, and very smiling district of 

 north-west Hampshire. Close by, at well- 

 named Longparish, the famous old sporting 



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