82 FEBRUARY 



land charm quite beyond those on the common or in the 

 hedgerow, and their fresh green leaves decorate boughs 

 twenty feet above your head. 



The neighbourhood has two scenic features that pos 

 sess the virtues of the wood, with some of their own. 

 Grimm s Dyke, which appears and reappears in short 

 reaches all across the Eastern Midlands, becomes a wood 

 with a narrow pathway through it. The high sides alone 

 are enough to keep out the weather, and nurse a little 

 extra warmth that both encourages plants and makes 

 attractive lodging for several animals. It is full of life. 

 Rabbits always prefer to start a burrow on a slope, and the 

 preference is shared by the fox, which often enough adopts 

 the home of its favourite victim. There is one such 

 earth in one part of the dyke well known to me. It has 

 steep and very slippery sides, which on one occasion 

 proved the undoing of a small boy startled by the sudden 

 appearance of a vixen just above him. If anywhere, 

 here is the place where you may discover the precocities 

 of spring, come upon the first bird s nest, watch the 

 baby rabbit, or detect the first flowers of the dog s mer 

 cury, which may be called the grass of the woods ; and, 

 indeed, of primrose and bluebell in their season. 



Grimm s Dyke was, of course, man-made, though the 

 trees have planted themselves. Another feature of the 

 country not unlike it if one may compare the straight 

 with the round is less directly man-made, though the 

 origin is not always surely known. It is a feature only 

 found in the chalk counties, and is peculiarly characteris 

 tic of the edges of the Chilterns. It is always called the 

 dell-hole in local speech ; and well called. It is not quite 

 a dell and not quite a hole. It tends to be circular, and 

 is probably the result of chalk-digging by farmers, though 

 sometimes the chalk falls in of its own initiative. These 



