86 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
Holly berries, too, are eaten; and holly hedges, 
despite their prickly leaves, are favourites with garden 
birds. It would be possible, I think, to so plan out 
a garden as to attract almost every feathered crea- 
ture. 
A fine old filbert walk extends far away towards 
the orchard : the branches meet overhead. In autumn 
the fruit hangs thick; and what is more exquisite, 
when gathered from the bough and eaten, as all fruit 
should be, on the spot? I cannot understand why 
filbert walks are not planted by our modern capital- 
ists, who make nothing of spending a thousand 
pounds in forcing-houses. I cannot help thinking 
that true taste consists in the selection of what is 
thoroughly characteristic of soil and climate. Those 
magnificent yew hedges, the filbert walk—all, in fact 
are to be levelled to make way for a garish stucco- 
fronted hunting-box, with staring red stables and 
every modern convenience. The sun-dial shaft is 
already heaved up and broken. 
The old mansion was used as a grammar school 
for a great many years, but has been deserted for the 
last quarter of a century ; and melancholy indeed are 
the silent hollow halls and dormitories. The white- 
washed walls are yellow and green from damp, and 
covered in patches with saltpetre efflorescence ; but 
they still bear the hasty inscriptions scrawled on them 
by boyish hands—some far back in the eighteenth 
century. The history of this little kingdom, with its 
