71 
13 or 14 years. “ Because,” I said, “ my brother and I were 
the first to discover that and to publish it.” I asked him if he 
had often seen them go up, and he said, “ Yes, often.” “ Now,” 
I said, “ I want to ask you one more question. Have you ever 
seen them come down? ” “ Yes, several times. I have counted 
them up, and counted them down.” 
Now that is as near as we can get to proof until we get an 
airship or aeroplane to stay up with them all night. 
On-the 12th of August the Swifts have usually disappeared. 
They go to Africa and spread themselves over it from the North 
to Cape Colony. When they were gone there was always to me 
a sense of loss both to sight and ear. The familiar rapid bow¬ 
like forms and the merriest of the summer sounds had departed, 
the first of our summer guests had gone South. As Rudyard 
Kipling expresses it: 
“There’s a whisper down the field, 
Where the year has shot her yield, 
And the ricks stand grey to the sun— 
Singing—Over then, come over, 
For the bee has quit the clover 
And your English summer’s done. 
The Heathlands of South Hampshire, 
Bv W. Munn Rankin', M.Sc., 
B.Sc. 
Read'before the Botanical Section, January tfitb, 1913. 
fTIHE heathlands are the most characteristic feature of the 
Hampshire landscape. No other English county has so high 
a proportion of waste within its borders. In the northern quarters 
wide sandy heaths extend over the Bagshot sands and join with 
others in Berks and Surrey. On the east, where the outcrops of 
the Lower Greensand lie below the edge of the chalk downs, ex¬ 
tend the wastes of Wolmer Forest. And on the south-west the 
New Corest is at once the most varied and picturesque among 
heathlands. Here the Hampshire heaths join up with the great 
wastes of Dorset, which occupy all the county, excepting the 
fertile slopes and bottoms of the valleys of several streams—the 
Avon, Stour, Puddle, and Frome—between the limits of the New 
Forest, the Purbeck Downs, and the Dorset Heights. 
It is between Southampton Water and Dorchester that the 
heathland attains its finest development in this country, and at the 
same time shows the closest affinity to the great heaths of N'-rth 
Germany. The western half of this waste has been described 
with the utmost fidelity in Mr. Hardy’s sketches of Egdon Heath. 
The heathlands comprise, woods of oak, beech mid birch, 
scrubs of holly and thorn, and heaths dominated by the growth 
of ling, Call-tin a vulgaris. The heathlands of the New Forest and 
