THE OLD COUNTRY HOUSE

BY FULLERTON L. WALDO

I HAVE just spent some blessed hours in an old country house of England and been stirred to wonder as I walked among the roses, purple asters and sweet peas, or felt underfoot the close contexture of the dewy sod, or followed a natural pathway between the oaks and silver birches in the spinney. There indeed, as my host remarked, he who first placed the monarchs of the forest (while they were but princelings) planted not for his own day, selfishly, but for posterity. And here was an Elizabethan barn, with mossed and mouldering red or purplish tiles, axe-hewn timbers and hand-wrought iron cleats-fit house for a miracle-play, to which in the dusky interior its hanging platform, as for a devil's stage, invited.

Legend clustered thick round the bole of every great and gracious tree in the arbored grotto. The pink light on the Scotch firs in the rifted mist was not so lovely as the English girl who stood at a window-as though Franz Hals had painted her home-in the buff-tinted wall of the old rambling mansion.

And this, I said, is England. That girl, so playful now, who works in a bank long hours all the week, is England: those young men from the front who would die for her, and are dying for her, are England. You cannot defeat an England that has her richest treasure in precious wares like these.

WOLMER FOREST

GILBERT WHITE (1720-1793):

Natural History of Selborne.

THE royal forest of Wolmer is a tract of land of about seven miles in length, by two and a half in breadth, running nearly from north to south, and is abutted on, to begin to the south, and so to proceed eastward, by the parishes of Greatham, Lysse, Rogate, and Trotton, in the county of Sussex; by Bramshot, Hedleigh, and Kingsley. This royalty consists entirely of sand covered with heath and fern; but is somewhat diversified with hills and dales, without having one standing tree in the whole extent. In the bottoms, where the waters stagnate, are many bogs, which formerly abounded with subterraneous trees; though Dr. Plot says positively, that "there never were any fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the southern counties." But he was mistaken: for I myself have seen cottages on the verge of this wild district, whose timbers consisted of a black hard wood, looking like oak, which the owners assured me they procured from the bogs by probing the soil with spits, or some such instruments: but the peat is so much cut out, and the moors have been so well examined, that none has been found of late. Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil-wood of a paler colour, and softer nature, which the inhabitants called fir: but, upon a nice examination, and

trial by fire, I could discover nothing resinous in them ; and therefore rather suppose that they were parts of a willow or alder, or some such aquatic

tree.

This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many sorts of wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, but breed there in the summer; such as lapwings, snipes, wild-ducks, and, as I have discovered within these few years, teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred in good seasons on the verge of this forest, into which they love to make excursions and in particular, in the dry summer of 1740 and 1741, and some years after, they swarmed to such a degree, that parties of unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty and sometimes thirty brace in a day..

But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, now extinct, which I have heard old people say abounded much before shooting flying became so common, and that was the heath-cock, blackgame, or grouse. When I was a little boy I recollect one coming now and then to my father's table. The last pack remembered was killed about thirtyfive years ago; and within these ten years one solitary greyhen was sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare. The sportsmen cried out, "A hen pheasant"; but a gentleman present, who had often seen grouse in the north of England, assured me that it was a greyhen.

Nor does the loss of our black game prove the only gap in the Fauna Selborniensis; for another beautiful link in the chain of beings is wanting, I mean the red deer, which toward the beginning of

D

this century amounted to about five hundred head, and made a stately appearance. There is an old keeper, now alive, named Adams, whose greatgrandfather (mentioned in a perambulation taken in 1635), grandfather, father and self, enjoyed the head keepership of Wolmer-forest in succession for more than an hundred years. This person assures me, that his father has often told him, that Queen Anne, as she was journeying on the Portsmouth road, did not think the forest of Wolmer beneath her royal regard. For she came out of the great road at Lippock, which is just by, and reposing herself on a bank smoothed for that purpose, lying about half a mile to the east of Wolmer-pond, and still called Queen's-bank, saw with great complacency and satisfaction the whole herd of red deer brought by the keepers along the vale before her, consisting then of about five hundred head. A sight this, worthy the attention of the greatest sovereign! But he further adds that, by means of the Waltham blacks, or, to use his own expression, as soon as they began blacking, they were reduced to about fifty head, and so continued decreasing till the time of the late Duke of Cumberland. It is now more than thirty years ago that his highness sent down an huntsman, and six yeomen-prickers, in scarlet jackets laced with gold, attended by the stag-hounds; ordering them to take every deer in this forest alive, and convey them in carts to Windsor. In the course of the summer they caught every stag, some of which showed extraordinary diversion; but, in the following winter, when the hinds were also carried off, such fine chases were

exhibited as served the country people for matter of talk and wonder for years afterwards. I saw myself one of the yeomen-prickers single out a stag from the herd, and must confess that it was the most curious feat of activity I ever beheld, superior to anything in Mr. Astley's riding-school. The exertions made by the horse and deer much exceeded all my expectations; though the former greatly excelled the latter in speed. When the devoted deer was separated from his companions, they gave him, by their watches, law, as they called it, for twenty minutes; when, sounding their horns, the stop-dogs were permitted to pursue, and a most gallant scene ensued.

On the verge of the forest, as it is now circumscribed, are three considerable lakes, two in Oakhanger, of which I have nothing particular to say; and one called Bin's or Bean's Pond, which is worthy the attention of a naturalist or a sportsman. For, being crowded at the upper end with willows, and with the carex cespitosa, it affords such a safe and pleasing shelter to wild-ducks, teals, snipes, etc., that they breed there. In the winter this covert is also frequented by foxes, and sometimes by pheasants; and the bogs produce many curious plants.

By a perambulation of Wolmer-forest and the Holt, made in 1635, and in the eleventh year of

1 I mean that sort which, rising into tall hassocks, is called by the foresters torrets; a corruption, I suppose, of turrets.

Note, In the beginning of the summer 1787 the royal forests of Wolmer and Holt were measured by persons sent down by govern

ment.