CULPEPPER'S BOWL 309 



exquisitely graceful roe-deer as a familiar and a 

 permanent inhabitant. In one of the gnarled or 

 stunted hawthorn bushes, which grow within the 

 pit, safe from every wind that blows, and heavily 

 laden, sometimes by the over-mastering ivy, some- 

 times by the luxuriant honeysuckle, which lavishes 

 its sweetness on the air around, the " bush-magpie " 

 often makes her nest, scarcely to be distinguished 

 amidst the leafy tangle. Here, and perhaps only 

 here, as far as my experience goes, you can stand on 

 terra firma, and look down upon the dome of the 

 magpie's nest immediately below you ; you can all 

 .but see into it. 



The surroundings of these pits are in perfect 

 harmony with the pits themselves. Lie down half 

 buried in the heather, or amidst the dwarf gorse 

 which, in autumn, is festooned with streamers of the 

 delicately tinted dodder and you will see, after an 

 interval, the other magpie flitting in slow flight, and 

 curracking merrily as he flies, from pit to pit, or 

 from bush to bush, or perched upon the top of a 

 holly, his tail fully spread, and swaying gracefully up 

 and down, as it fans or is fanned by the passing 

 breeze. In the hollow of the moor below, you may 

 watch a circle of herons, perhaps twenty in number, 

 gathered together from the rich valley of the Frome 



