230 BIRD LIFE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR 



whence we may hope sufficient light has emanated to 

 make certain practices pursued by the rude forefathers 

 of the hamlet, and described by White, long since 

 things of the past. 



At the end of the street we come suddenly upon a 

 square space of no great extent, round which the interest 

 of the village to most visitors doubtless, as to ourselves, 

 centres. It is the Plestor, about which antiquarians 

 have had so much to say in the various editions of the 

 Natural History of Selborne, gathering-place of the 

 rustics, perhaps from Saxon times. In the middle of 

 it is a sycamore of no great size, the successor of " the 

 vast oak, the delight of young and old," which stood 

 here till " the amazing tempest of 1703 overturned it 

 at once to the infinite regret of the inhabitants." 

 That long and rather irregularly built house, facing the 

 road upon the south side of the Plestor, we have no 

 difficulty in recognising, in spite of its new red-brick 

 front, as " the Wakes," formerly the home of the 

 naturalist. Though partly rebuilt, its look of old- 

 fashioned comfort and quiet prosperity has not been 

 disturbed. To the right is the high wall of the kitchen 

 garden, which restricted the wanderings of Timothy 

 the tortoise, till one sunny morning " he found the 

 wicket open, eluded the vigilance of the gardener, and 

 escaped into the sainfoin, and thence into the beans." 

 No doubt this is the wall which in 1773 produced 

 " ten dozen lovely peaches and nectarines." Turning 



