288 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
note the passage overhead of the rooks in the morning 
in winter as one of their signs of time, so regular was 
their appearance; and if the fog hid them, the noise 
from a thousand black wings and throats could not 
be missed. 
If, from the rising ground beyond the Warren or 
from the downs beyond that, the glance is allowed to 
travel slowly over the vale northwards, instead of the 
innumerable meadows which are really there, it will 
appear to consist of one vast forest. Of the hamlet 
not far distant there is nothing visible but the white 
wall of a cottage, perhaps, shining in the sun, or the 
pale blue smoke curling upwards. This wooded 
appearance is caused by timber trees standing in the 
hedgerows, in the copses at the corners of the 
meadows, and by groups and detached trees in the 
middle of the fields. 
Many hedges are full of elms, some have rows of 
oaks ; some meadows have trees growing so thickly 
in all four hedges as to seem surrounded by a timber 
wall ; one or two have a number of ancient spreading 
oaks dotted about in the field itself, or standing in 
rows. But there are not nearly so many trees as 
there used to be. Numerous hedges have been 
grubbed to make the fields larger. 
Within the last thirty years two large falls of 
timber have taken place, when the elms especially 
were thrown wholesale. The old men, however, recall 
a much greater ‘throw,’ as they term it, of timber, 
