ON SURREY HILLS. 



CHAPTER I. 



A ROADSIDE NATURALIST. 



England has been described by many a foreign 

 visitor as the country par excellence of good roads 

 and hedges, green turf and fruitful fields. Woods, 

 moorlands, and heaths afford shelter to our wild 

 creatures, .and in some instances yield food also ; 

 but the great bulk of animal and bird life lives and 

 multiplies by the roadsides, or close to them. Some 

 of the walks to my work have taken me over roads 

 with never a house for two long miles and more — 

 roads protected on either side by high hedges that 

 no rustic living could tell the age of, overgrown with 

 grey moss and lichens, and having a broad stripe of 



a 



