66 Woodside. 



dormant in the winter, the circulation of the blood and 

 respiration being brought almost to a standstill. The squirrel 

 does not hybernate so completely as this, but he builds a 

 large nest of sticks in the fork of a large tree, and lines it 

 with moss and leaves ; into this he creeps, sleeping some- 

 times for days at a stretch, but coming out occasionally for 

 food and to bask in the sun, if the day be bright. 



What a pretty fellow the squirrel is, with his reddish- 

 brown coat and white breast and belly. Sometimes squirrels 

 have grey or even white tails, whilst occasionally their fur 

 is entirely grey, or, very rarely indeed, almost white. 

 Sometimes, too, we may see individuals in which the hairs 

 are almost equally divided between brown and white. 



Now we go on again under the trees, their large boles 

 giving origin to quite a girdle of short branches with 

 delicately-coloured leaves. There, on yonder slope, in the 

 large trees, is a heronry. The herons breed here j^ear after 

 year, and come back here night after night to sleep, after fish- 

 ing all day in the marshes along the banks of the Thames 

 and Medway. The old saying, u He doesn't know a hawk 

 from a handsaw," is still the most contemptuous phrase which 

 some Kentish people can use to emphasise the ignorance of 

 any person in matters ornithological. The connection be- 

 tween a " hawk " and a " handsaw " is not at first quite 

 evident, but it becomes clear when we know that the old 

 name for the heron was heronshaw, and that the country 

 people corrupted the latter to handsaw, so that the statement 

 really means that the person in question does not know the 

 difference between a hawk and a heron an amount of im- 

 measurable ignorance never, I presume, to be forgiven. A 

 short distance farther and we reach some steps from which 



