SAVERNAKE FOREST 149 



considering that the time for his resurrection has 

 not yet come. 



My other ravens' nests I must dismiss more 

 briefly. The next which I found was, two years 

 later, in Savernake Forest, while I was at school 

 at Marlborough. Savernake Forest, take it all in 

 all, is the finest bit of wooHland scenery in England, 

 and a very paradise of birds. A paradise and a 

 sanctuary it would be in one, if it were not for the 

 near neighbourhood of so many hundred boys. Of 

 this, however, I should be the last to complain, 

 seeing that nearly every spare hour of my three 

 years at school was passed within it. It has every 

 species of game from herds of red and fallow deer 

 to pheasants, partridges, and rabbits ; and, what is 

 more to my purpose to remark, it is also the happy 

 home as so many wild tracks of woodland and 

 noble parks might still be in England of large 

 numbers of interesting birds of prey, the sparrow 

 and the kestrel hawk, the white owl and the brown 

 owl, the crow and the magpie. With jays and 

 jackdaws it literally swarms. Its primaeval oaks or 

 beeches, as they gradually decay, afford easy boring 

 and nesting room for every species of climbing 

 bird, the woodpecker, green and spotted, the 

 nuthatch, the wryneck, and the tree-creeper. The 



