196 OLIVER V. APLIN: A VISIT TO RAINWORTH LODGE. 



one of large extent, are scattered over the forest. The view from the 

 higher ground at the back of the Lodge is extremely fine, and seen 

 on the bright clear air of Easter Sunday, the distance covered by the 

 eye was immense. You looked over stretches of umber-brown 

 heather, varied with the brighter brown of the dead bracken and 

 patches of dark-green gorse ; over broad plantations of young larch, 

 just putting on a tinge of delicate green ; over great arable fields and 

 clumps and masses of dark wood, on over Edwinstowe Church, into 

 the misty distance and the hills beyond Retford. A little to the right 

 on the eastern horizon Lincoln Cathedral stood out clearly and 

 sharply defined against the sky-line five and thirty miles away. 

 Starting out on Sunday afternoon, we had not been out of the house 

 five minutes before a pair of Shovellers, a single male, and a pair of 

 Teal rose from the Wash-dyke, while a pair of Mallard did not deign 

 to rise from a two-foot ditch at one side. We walked, up the hill to 

 get a view of Bradder's Dam, over which two Black Terns were 

 hawking as we drove past from tlie station the evening before, but 

 they had left in the night. We then turned up the little rapid stream 

 (which later in the season would be shadowed over with the long 

 graceful fronds of the Lady Fern, and brightened with purple Fox- 

 gloves), finding a Pewit's nest by the way, discriminating between 

 the male and female by their different flight, and spotting the latter 

 as she rose from a bed of Carex. Arrived at Fountain Dale, we 

 spent a pleasant afternoon examining the beauties of the place ; 

 a striking beauty here is the rhododendron, which thrives grandly 

 in the sandy peat, one bush growing on a sloping bank was perhaps 

 ten yards across, and another, hardly less in extent, must have been 

 a dozen feet high. The Spanish Chestnut flourishes here, but not so 

 the Horse Chestnut, perhaps the only tree, save the Elm, which 

 does not attain exceptional dimensions in this natural arboretum. 

 The middle pond held four pairs of Tufted Ducks, whose snowy 

 flanks showed up beautifully on the water darkened by the gloomy 

 evening and the shade of the black Scotch Firs. We renewed our 

 acquaintance with the little ruined chapel where King Richard 

 caroused with the ' curtal Friar,' and the spring under which he cooled 

 his heated brain next morning, also with the monument erected 

 on the spot where the last of the outlaws was slain by one of the 

 King's keepers, 4th February, 1608; Leake was the keeper's name, 

 and he lies buried in Blidworth Churchyard, as a tablet in the old 

 church testifies. Strolling home, we saw on the Cave pond a pair of 

 Shovellers floating quietly under the bank ; they presently rose, and 

 circling round, pitched again but a short distance from us. At 

 Fountain Dale a Common Buzzard alighted at the hall door a few 



Naturalist, 



