Close by a ploughed field of about forty acres was the camping-ground of an army of peewits; they were travellers from the north perhaps, and were quietly resting, sprinkled over the whole area. More abundant were the small birds in mixed flocks or hordes--finches, buntings, and larks in thousands on thousands, with a sprinkling of pipits and pied and grey wagtails, all busily feeding on the stubble and fresh ploughed land. Thickly and evenly distributed, they appeared to the vision ranging over the brown level expanse as minute animated and variously coloured clods--black and brown and grey and yellow and olive-green. It was a rare pleasure to be in this company, to revel in their astonishing numbers, to feast my soul on them as it were--little birds in such multitudes that ten thousand Frenchmen and Italians might have gorged to repletion on their small succulent bodies--and to reflect that they were safe from persecution so long as they remained here in England. This is something for an Englishman to be proud of. After spending two hours at Crux Easton, with that dense immovable fog close by, I at length took the plunge to get to Highclere. What a change! I was at once where all form and colour and melody had been blotted out. My clothes were hoary with clinging mist, my fingers numb with cold, and Highclere, its scattered cottages appearing like dim smudges through the whiteness, was the dreariest village on earth. I fled on to Newbury in quest of warmth and light, and found it indoors, but the town was deep in the fog. The next day I ventured out again to look for the sun, and found it not, but my ramble was not without its reward. In a pine wood three miles from the town I stood awhile to listen to the sound as of copious rain of the moisture dropping from the trees, when a sudden tempest of loud, sharp metallic notes--a sound dear to the ornithologist's ears--made me jump; and down into the very tree before which I was standing dropped a flock of about twenty crossbills. So excited and noisy when coming down, the instant they touched the tree they became perfectly silent and motionless. Seven of their number had settled on the outside shoots, and sat there within forty feet of me, looking like painted wooden images of small green and greenish-yellow parrots; for a space of fifteen minutes not the slightest movement did they make, and at length, before going, I waved my arms about and shouted to frighten them, and still they refused to stir.