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Richard Jefferies. Wild Life in a Southern County
Wild Life in a Southern County
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter One
The Downs—The Entrenchment—Ways of Larks—Hares—A Combat—Happiness of Animals—Ants—A Long Journey
Chapter Two
A Drought—Ancient Garrison of the Entrenchment—Traditions of Forest—Curious Ponds—A Mirage
Chapter Three
The Hillside Hedge: its Birds and Flowers—A Green Track—The Spring-head
Chapter Four
The Village—The Washpool—Village Industries—The Belfry—Jackdaws—Village Chronicles
Chapter Five
Village Architecture—The Cottage Preacher—Cottage Society—The Shepherd—Events of the Village Year
Chapter Six
The Hamlet—Cottage Astrology—Ghost Lore—Herbs—The Waggon and its Crew—Stiles—The Trysting-Place—The Thatcher—Smugglers—Ague
Chapter Seven
The Farmhouse—Traditions—Hunting Pictures—The Farmer’s Year—Sport—The Auction Festival—A Summer’s Day—Beauty of Wheat
Chapter Eight
Birds of the Farmhouse—Speech of a Starling—Population of a Gable—The King of the Hedge—The Thrushes’ Anvil
Chapter Nine
The Orchard—Emigrant Martins—The Missel-thrush—Caravan Route of Birds and Animals—A Fox in Ambush—A Snake in a Clock
Chapter Ten
The Wood-Pile—Lizards—Sheds and Rickyard—The Witches’ Briar—Insects—Plants, Flowers, and Fruit
Chapter Eleven
The Home-Field—Hazel Corner—The Divining-Rod—Rabbits’ Holes—The Corncrake—Ventriloquism of Birds—Hedge Fruit
Chapter Twelve
The Ash Copse—The Nightingale—Cloud of Starlings—Hedgehogs—Heron’s Head—Moorhens—Among the Reeds
Chapter Thirteen
The Warren—Rabbit-Burrows—Ferrets—The Quarry—The Forest—Squirrels—Deer—Dying Rabbit—A Hawk
Chapter Fourteen
The Rookery—Building Nests—Young Birds—Rook-Shooting—Stealing Rooks—Antics in the Air—Mode of Flight—White Rooks
Chapter Fifteen
Rooks Returning to Roost—Vast Flocks—Rook Parliament—The Two Rook Armies and their Routes—Rook Laws, Traditions, and Ancient History—“Throws” of Timber—Thieving Jackdaws
Chapter Sixteen
Notes on Birds—Nightingales—Chaffinches—Migration—Packing—Intermarriage—Peewits—Crows—Cuckoos—Golden-Crested Wren
Chapter Seventeen
Notes on the Year—The Two Natural Eras—Spiders—The Seasons Represented Together—A Murderous Wasp—Feng-Shui—The Birds’ White Elephant—Hedge Memoranda
Chapter Eighteen
Snake-Lore—Snakes Swallowing Frogs—Swimming—Fond of Milk—Trapping Snakes—Frogs Climbing—Toads in Trees—The Brook—The Hatch—Kingfishers’ Haunts
Chapter Nineteen
Course of the Brook—The Birds’ Bathing-Place—Roach—Jack on their Journeys—The Stickleback’s Nest—Woodcock—The Lake—Herons—Mussels—Reign of Terror in the Lake
Chapter Twenty
Wildfowl of the Lake—Sea Birds—Drift Wood—Forces of Nature at Work—Waves—Evaporation—An Eagle—Frost and Snow—Effect on Birds and Animals—Water-Meadows—Shooting Stars—Phosphorescence—Waterspout—Noises ‘in the Air.’
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Richard Jefferies
Published by Good Press, 2021
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In winter the bourne often has the appearance of a broad brook: you may observe where the current has arranged the small flints washed in from the fields by the rain. As the villages are on the lesser ‘bournes,’ so the towns are placed on the banks of the rivers these fall into. There may generally be found a row of villages and hamlets on the last slope of the downs, where the hills sink finally away into the plain and vale, so that if anyone went along the edge of the hills he would naturally think the district well populated. But if instead of following the edge he penetrated into the interior he would find the precise contrary to be the case. Just at the edge there is water, the ‘heads’ of the innumerable streams that make the vale so verdant. In the days when wealth consisted chiefly in flocks and herds, men would naturally settle where there were ‘water-brooks.’
When at last the drought ceases, and the rain does come, it often pours with tropical vehemence; so that the soil of the fields upon the slopes is carried away into the brooks, and the furrows are filled up level with the sand washed out from the clods, the lighter particles of earth floating suspended in the stream, the heavier sand remaining behind. Then, sometimes, as the slow labourer lingers over the ground, with eyes ever bent downwards, he spies a faint glitter, and picks up an antique coin in his horny fingers: coins are generally found after a shower, on the same principle that the gold-seekers wash away the auriferous soil in the ‘cradle,’ and lay bare the yellow atoms. Such coins, too, are sometimes of the same precious metal, ancient and rude. Sometimes the edge of the hoe clinks against a coin, thus at last discovered after so many centuries; yet which for years must have lain so near the surface as to have been turned over and over again by the ploughshare, though unnoticed.
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