104 
NATURE NOTES. 
doubled during the last century, but the increase has been 
chiefly about Blackmoor, on the borders of the forest, where 
Lord Selborne lately established himself, and built a large house 
and a noble church. A few new houses there are about Sel- 
borne, but the village itself is little changed. 
I went down one of the deep lanes — for from every side the 
roads descend into the village — and crossing the rivulet which 
takes its rise at the base of Nore Hill, made my way to the 
comfortable little inn where so many lovers of the gentle Gilbert 
have lodged. On the stairs to my room was a bust of Ray and 
a stuffed fern owl. 
The Wakes — the home of Gilbert White — has not now much 
attraction for the pilgrim to Selborne. It has been enlarged and 
much altered; yet the garden and the beautiful site remain. 
The house faces the street and comes close up to it, but from the 
other side it looks over a pretty garden and some twenty acres 
of meadow and pasture with large trees — a space of perhaps 500 
yards — straight to the steep beech woods of the Hanger. On 
the other side of the street is the Plestor or village-green, where 
stood the “ vast oak, overturned by the amazing tempest of 
1703.” A thrifty sycamore now occupies its place. Beyond 
the green is the church, a stout irregular pile, Norman and 
early English, with massive heavily-buttressed tower, aisles of 
unequal size and a single transept. The old yew-tree still 
stands and is likely to stand for centuries. 
While the light yet lasted I hastened to mount the Hanger 
by the steep chalk path, now slippery with much rain. Once 
through the beech woods, you enter on an almost level plain 
which is the top of the down, but this is not the bare sheep walk 
which I, forgetting White’s description of it as “a pleasing, park- 
like spot,” had pictured to myself, but a most charming com- 
bination of tangled shrubberies, bright with many coloured 
fruits, enclosing spacious lawns of freshest green, of clumps of 
fine beeches luxuriating in their native chalk, and of thick- 
coppice of smaller trees. Here are masses of bracken, waist- 
deep, gay with their autumn tints, hawthorns crimson with fruit 
are canopied with snowy clematis and hung about with honey- 
suckle ; the brambles and the bower roses make an arching and 
rounded tangle, impossible to penetrate yet most sweet to look 
upon, a safe refuge to every bird and beast that seeks its covert. 
The summit of the down is not all level plain either, for here 
and there it slopes down to the woods in little dells and hollows 
where wood and coppice meet. It would be idle by any attempt 
of art to endeavour to rival this wild garden of nature. From 
this height the distant views are very pleasing. The village 
itself and its wooded stream are hidden by the trees, but to the 
south and to the west the Hampshire hills succeed each other 
in curved outlines, while away to the east the eye travels over 
the low-lying forest to the bold promontory of Hind Head, 
where the North Downs of Surrey and the South Downs of 
