48 ON SURREY HILLS. 



fields through which I frequently passed snipe had 

 nested — the only pair about that quarter. Many a 

 time the woodmen and their boys stopped to watch 

 the snipe's play, and to listen to the peculiar sound 

 made in its downward flight. That bird was never 

 shot or molested in any way, and yet it was not 

 preserved ground he nested on. "We likes to see 

 him cut them capers, we do — it's cur'ous," they 

 would say to me. They were fond of pets, those 

 woodmen, and many a bird they and their children 

 had in cages outside their cottages, the door being 

 left open for them to go in and out as they 

 pleased. 



As I said before, my knowledge of Surrey Hills 

 dates back from a considerable period of time — 

 when the mansions of the old gentry of the land, 

 the owners of the soil, — with their interiors furnished 

 with solid oak and mahogany, made by hands that 

 loved their work and did it conscientiously, and 

 their walls covered with paintings representing some 

 incident or other of outdoor natural life rather than 

 the so-called pictures of genre or the sickly senti- 

 mentalisms of the more aesthetic world, — were the 

 only houses to be seen. And these stood far apart. 



