AN A UTUMN DAY AT SELBORNE 185 
watching the leaves and the fruit mellowing and yellowing 
down together, and I think what is true of one is true of the 
other. This view seems to me more in accordance with Nature. 
They have both a similar point of attachment to the branch, 
which gradually becomes weakened and eventually gives way 
when maturity is complete : they then fall and decay. 
It is marvellous, when we really think of it, in a climate 
like ours, how wisely Nature has regulated the light and shade 
for the different seasons. Most of our trees and shrubs are 
deciduous, that is, they lose their leaves annually at the 
approach of the long, dark and dreary winter, when every 
ray of light is valuable. Were they all, or in greater part, 
evergreen, we should hardly grope our way about. Take any 
individual tree, or a wood, such as the Selborne Hanger. The 
shade is welcome through our long, bright days, although 
we can barely see the sky through its roof of foliage. How 
gloomy this would be in winter. This roof is removed. The 
trees become divested of their leaves. The sky shows itself 
and the light penetrates through the airy and graceful skeletons 
with little diminution of its power. We can hardly conceive 
what our winters would be in the country were the foliage 
perennial. We have always the happy consolation of knowing 
that as surely as the leaves go in autumn, they will come 
again in spring, although in a different dress, which is more or 
less being prepared for them in the interval. 
On October 15, in early morning, I reached Selborne by way 
of Alton. I always like a country ramble before the hedge 
trimming begins, the roads and lanes are then so charming. 
The beauty of the Devonshire lanes is proverbial, but, to me, 
those of Hampshire, and especially Surrey, are more enjoyable ; 
the hedges are not so uniformly parallel and restricted as in 
Devon. I like the varying strips of greensward by the road- 
side, which seem as though the hedges had overflown with their 
wealth of rustic beauty and had planted here and there brambles 
and clumps of their own happy mixtures, whilst still giving us 
room for blackberrying. The old lanes about Selborne are not 
remarkable for their width, but rather for the height of their 
charming banks, which are indeed one of the features of the 
place. On my arrival at Norton Farm, inclination would have 
taken me down the old lane by a more circuitous route to the 
village, and once the only way ; but in these cycling times such 
a course would not have been practicable ; so for the last mile 
the new road, with its trimly kept quick hedges, had to be 
taken. Here on the left was seen, on the occasion of the 
Gilbert White centenary in June, 1893, when so many flocked 
to Selborne, the old time picture of four sturdy, brown, Sussex 
oxen yoked together and ploughing as carefully as, if a little 
more slowly than, the more familiar horses of the present day. 
At some distance before approaching the village the Hanger 
comes in view. I was anxious to get the first sight of it in its 
