SPRING IN WESSEX 
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The trout has vanished among the mass of milfoil, crow-silk, 
and star-wort, which are sorted out and bent over southwards by 
the flow ; where the fish lay, the pebbles of the bed are now 
plainly discernible. 
In a sluggish tributary, some boys are catching minnows 
with the customary bent pin in place of a fish-hook. “ No, they 
are not sticklebacks, sir, they are real ones — real minnows.” The 
minnow's are astoundingly numerous ; some lie side by side in 
long files, twenty or thirty abreast, but by the sluice gate they 
form a sort of catharine-wheel, which constantly changes into 
an undefined labyrinth. A jack, probably a two-pounder, lies 
as stiff as a ramrod ; a small stone makes him dart amongst 
the weeds in such mad haste that the mud is churned up in 
sufficient quantity to cover his escape. He again settles, but 
the wariest fisherman cannot land him now. On the surface 
numbers of waters-skaters — Gerris is the entomological name — 
are gliding in a giddy maze. A brimstone butterfly, the first 
of the season, flits by. It is not of this year’s hatching ; it is 
an insect of last autumn and has withstood the winter and the 
sharp frosts of March. 
But we spoke of scenery. The Itchen is crossed by rustic 
bridges of different kinds, and a hundred yards away is a weir, 
backed by a flour mill whose white walls betray the industry 
followed within. Close by is an inn, and its lower windows are 
not more than two feet above the water’s edge. Even nowadays, 
the crypt of the cathedral is liable to be flooded. The mill shuts 
out the old hospital church of St. Cross, with its almshouses, and 
its bedesmen who are dressed in black gowns with a silver cross 
on the breast. The famous college of William of W'ykeham is 
near the mill. In the foreground is a huge chalk bluff, covered 
scantily with grass, and edged with pine trees on the escarpment. 
More chalk hills rise and sink in the distance, illustrating, as hills 
of no other geological formation illustrate, Hogarth’s line of 
beauty. At our back are cottages abutting on an old grey flint 
wall, which is bedecked with pellitory, saxifrage, ivy-leaved toad- 
flax, and wallflower. Ivy-leaved toadflax is certainly an alien, 
and, according to Loudon, the wallflower was introduced only in 
1573, yet what a firm roothold the intruders have taken. 
Everything seems old ; the very houses have an ancient 
architectural look. Here is a half timbered one with tiles of 
orange and red, cushioned -with thick moss ; the square windows, 
the sharp gables, the elbow'ed roof, the outstanding chimney 
stacks, carry us back to days of Raleigh and Drake. Another 
house has more windows, as Dickens humorously puts it, than 
a lazy person would care to count on a summer’s day. The 
cottage behind us has actually ogival windows, — the builder 
must have been a wag. But, after all, dwellings are inanimate, 
whilst the poplars, horse chestnuts, willows and ashes on the 
bank are full of lusty life. Like those spoken of by the Hebrew 
poet, they are planted by the water side. The ash buds are 
