BIBDS FOB LONDON 327 



years it has been free from the landscape gardener 

 with his pretty little conventions, and the 

 gamekeeper and henwife with their persecutions 

 and playing at Providence among the creatures. 

 If it were possible for a man to climb to the top 

 of one of its noble old trees — a tall cedar, beech, 

 or elm, with a girth of sixteen to eighteen feet — he 

 would look down and out upon London : leagues 

 upon leagues of houses, stretching away to the 

 southern horizon, with tall chimneys, towers, and 

 spires innumerable appearing above the brood- 

 ing cloud of smoke. But the wood itself seems 

 not to have been touched by its sulphurous 

 breath ; within its green shade all is fresh as 

 in any leafy retreat a hundred miles from town. 

 And here the wild creatures find a refuge. 

 Badgers — not one pair nor two, but a big colony 

 — have their huge subterraneous peaceful village 

 in the centre of the wood. The lodge-keeper's 

 wife told me that one evening, seeing her dog, 

 as she imagined, trotting from her across the 

 lawn, she called to him and, angered at his dis- 

 regard of her voice, ran after him for some dis- 

 tance among the trees, and only when she was 

 about to lay her hands on him discovered that 

 she was chasing a big badger. The badgers have^ 



