202 Alfred Charles Smith — In Memoriam. 



and he not only preached, hut so far as lay in his power practised, 

 the preservation of the less common English "birds. No gun was 

 ever fired within the charmed precincts of Yateshury Rectory. In 

 the belt of firs which sheltered the garden from the sweeping winds 

 of the downs, a pair of Magpies — comparatively scarce in this part 

 of the county — securely reared their young year after year ; and 

 the Brown Owls came to regard the paddock as so peculiarly their 

 own territory that they have been known to fly at and almost knock 

 off the Rector's hat when he ventured to intrude on their domain 

 in the evening. 



But though he gave his first love to the birds, he could not live 

 at Yateshury, in the very centre of the pre- Roman antiquities of 

 Northern Wilts, without turning his attention to archaeology, and 

 perhaps, after all, the most valuable work which he has left behind 

 him is to be found in the pages of the large quarto volume, " The 

 Guide to the British and Roman Antiquities of the North Wiltshire 

 Downs," which he published to accompany the Great Map of a 

 Hundred Square Miles Round Avebury, with every vestige of 

 antiquity marked upon it, which was the fruit of thirty years of 

 observation and record in the immediate vicinity of his home, as 

 the author sets forth in the dedication to his wife : " The constant 

 companion for the last thirty years of my rambles on horseback 

 over the North Wiltshire Downs." To anyone who would study 

 the antiquities of the northern half of the county this book is, and 

 must remain, an indispensable authority. But for all that he was 

 at heart more a naturalist than an archaeologist, or an antiquary. 



He travelled very widely in Southern and Western Europe before 

 the days when railroads and Cook's tours made Continental travel 

 universal. His first tour abroad was with his father in 1839, when 

 they visited Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and Holland — and 

 from this time onwards his innate love of travel, combined with the 

 chest weakness which was always with him, and drove him to seek 

 a warmer climate in the winter and early spring, led to a series of 

 tours, in most of which father and son travelled together — taking 

 their own horses and carriages with them and driving leisurely on 

 from one country to another, seeing in this way a great deal that 



