236 Wild Life in a Southern County 



is well timbered ; so that it is easy to form some idea of 

 the forest-like appearance it must have presented a hundred 

 years ago, when rows of giant oaks led up to that farm- 

 house door. 



Then there are archaeological reasons, which it would 

 be out of place to mention, why in very ancient days a 

 forest, in all probability, stood hereabouts. It seems 

 reasonable to suppose that in one way or another the 

 regular flight of the second army of rooks passing down 

 into this district was originally attracted by the trees. 

 Three suggestions arise out of the circumstances. 



The wood in which both streams of rooks roost at 

 night stands on the last slope of the downs ; behind it to 

 the south extend the hills, and the open tilled upland 

 plains; below it northwards are the meadows. It has, 

 therefore, much the appearance of the last surviving 

 remnant of the ancient forest. There has been a wood 

 there time out of mind : there are references to the woods 

 of the locality dating from the sixteenth century. Now if 

 we suppose (and such seems to have been really the case) 

 the unenclosed woodlands below gradually cleared of trees, 

 thereby doubtless destroying many rookeries — the rooks 

 driven away would naturally take refuge in the wood re- 

 maining. There the enclosure protected them, and there 

 the trees, being seldom or never cut down, or if cut down 

 felled with judgment and with a view to future timber, 

 grew to great size and in such large groups as they prefer. 

 But as birds are creatures of habit, their descendants in 

 the fiftieth generation would still revisit the old places in 

 the meadows. 



Secondly, although so many successive 'throws' of 

 timber thinned out the trees, yet there may still be found 

 more groups and rows of elms and oak in this direction 



