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Nature Notes : 
THE SELBORNE SOCTETrS MAGAZINE, 
No. 219. MARCH, 1908. VoL. XIX. 
DEVONSHIRE WOODLANDS. 
iONG, trailing brambles, tall, green bracken ferns, giant 
marsh plume thistles, impenetrable masses of small, 
bushy nut trees, with here and there between the 
foliage the smooth, silver stems of a solitary holly or 
slender abele ; then, rising from this thick undergrowth, like 
pillars decked in green, stand sturdy oaks, their tlnck-set trunks 
the main supports of one wide canopy of green ; above, below, 
and all round, wherever the eye rests, all is green, green of every 
tint and every shade, bright brilliant green — the tell-tale sign of 
a damp, rainy atmosphere. The air is still and close, for the 
breeze blowing westward from over the common can hardly 
pierce the fastnesses of these wild English woods. Using a 
stout stick, I beat my way out into one of the over-grown rides, 
where the elegant spikes of the purple loosestrife vie, in colour 
and size, with the stately foxglove, that seems to droop its blooms 
in maidenly modesty, self conscious of beauty. The sun emerges 
from behind a watery cloud, and throw's its dazzling light along 
the length of the clearing, opening the petals of the pimpernels, 
rousing the lazy hum in the bumble bee, and sending out the 
two-winged flies in myriads to dance and hover over the umbels 
of the water dropwort or around the pink labiate blossoms of the 
wood betony. Watch that volucella (a fly, I believe, which in 
its larval state is parasitic on the bee), hanging motionless in mid 
air as the kestrel loves to do. Follow him, too, when he dashes 
off on quivering wings to seize some tiny midge. Every time he 
darts away, his cruel jaws close on an unfortunate insect, yet do 
not blame the volucella, though he be killing all the day ; his 
time will come, and perchance ere long we may recognise 
his withered form hanging on a thorn with the beetles and bees 
of a butcher bird’s larder. And the butcher bird ? He may be 
in the clutches of a falcon, and the falcon shot by the game- 
keeper, all haply within the space of the_ 24 hours. For in 
nature there is eternal war. 
