xvi MEMOIR 



rather disastrous in its after effects. Such was the 

 " Siege of Jotapata," as re-enacted strictly according to 

 Josephus, in and around an empty stable at the back 

 of the Vicarage. The methods of constructing and 

 working siege implements had been carefully studied 

 by the three brothers, and their battering-ram (weighted 

 with lead stripped from the stable roof) proved so 

 effective that a breach a couple of feet square was 

 very soon made in a particularly solid wall. In the 

 meantime, the beleaguered citizens running short of 

 " clods," the orthodox missile of Suffolk boyhood, 

 and disdaining stones as unsportsmanlike, supplied 

 themselves with ammunition from the winter's supply 

 of potatoes which were stored in the loft above the 

 stable. After that sieges were voted too expensive 

 a form of amusement, but further scenes from Jewish 

 history were enacted in the " Caves of Engedi," which 

 were mined in the gravel banks of the river Deben. 



At fourteen, up till which age he had been educated 

 at home by his father and mother, Charles Cornish 

 went to Charterhouse, just after the school had been 

 moved from London to its new home at Godalming. 

 The fauna of the Surrey hills is, needless to say, 

 totally different from that of high Suffolk, but, to 

 use words applied to him in later life, " almost by 

 instinct he would come to a right conclusion as to 

 the birds that would be found in a district to which 

 he had previously been a stranger, and it was seldom 

 that he looked for them without success. He was 

 an expert in finding nests, and it was scarcely possible 

 to show him one concerning which he had not some 



