IRatiue IRotes : 
Zbe Selboriie Society’s flDagasinc. 
No. 88. .-\PR 1 L, 1897. VoL. VIII. 
THE NEW FOREST IN SPRINGTIME. 
T is a sunny afternoon, in the middle of March. All 
night long the wind howled and moaned through the 
woods and across the bogs, driving the pelting rain 
before it in sheets. But at sunrise the rain slackened, 
then ceased altogether. The wind, though still strong, is no 
longer violent ; it careers joyously over the face of the land 
now, intent on drying up the pools and sloppy places caused 
by last night’s storm, instead of hurling itself with deadly 
energy against every obstacle in its path. 
Nevertheless, the roads are still spongy, and give out a soft, 
pleasant, crunching noise under the horses’ hoofs, as the great 
Romsey beer-waggons lumber by on their weekly journey. 
Those thin, straggling, picturesque Scotch firs at the side of 
the road are tossing their branches as though from very joy 
of life against the bright, pale blue, rain-washed sky. Down 
their lean and rugged stems are long streaks of black, where 
the rain, which beat so furiously against them, has not yet 
wholl)^ dried up. At their feet cluster some sturdy old gorse- 
bushes, cropped by many generations of Forest ponies and 
cows into dense, unyielding masses of green, like gigantic 
prickly cabbages. Another week, and these veterans will be 
one mass of gold ; at present they are thickly set with greyish 
yellow buds. 
Here and there the road-side turf is just beginning to take on 
a tint of brighter green, in place of the faded dun colour it has 
worn all the winter through. Two more days of this sunshine 
and east wind, and this same road will have dried and faded till 
it looks like a white ribbon, winding up the hill and across the 
moor, and whirlwinds of fine grit and dust will career along it. 
Down in the bog, under the shelter of that low, tussock-covered 
