IRature IRotes : 
tCbe Selbovne Society’s flDaoa.sine. 
No. 68. AUGUST, 1895. Vol. VI. 
A BIRD-HAUNTED PINE-GROVE. 
one of the loveliest spots along our pleasant coast lies 
^ a region that may well be called a bird-haunted pine- 
Ik grove. At one end of the district there was slain, in 
early times, a king who was canonized, and who has 
ever since been designated as a saint ; while at the other end, 
there was shot a later king whom nobody has ever thought of 
calling a saint, but who was, in truth, even among kings of 
that day, one of the saddest of sinners. Between them is a dis- 
trict full of objects of varied and almost unsurpassable interest. 
Near the first end lies a well-known headland that bears the 
name, slightly perverted, of another saint who was an early 
English bishop in the district. Among these sacred spots of 
saints, and death-sites of kings, are many fine rivers and 
estuaries, the favourite haunts of salmon, as in earlier times 
they had been of invading Norsemen ; and between the estuaries 
stands the pine-grove where, half a century ago, a shrewd 
landowner had the foresight to call in an architect and lay 
out pleasant slopes for building purposes, amidst banks clothed 
with gorse and broom, which had long been the resorts of 
the woodcock. 
Nowhere can you hear the sweetest songsters of our groves 
to greater perfection than among the pines that have now, in 
many parts of this region, been nurtured up, or have grown up 
to a great height and density. In early spring the thrushes and 
blackbirds make the whole district resound with their melody, 
singing out of sight in the pine-tops, as they love best to do. 
In no region do our sweetest songsters sing so beautifully as 
amid these pines. It is quite a mistake to suppose that birds 
sing everywhere with the same beauty of melody. Though their 
