HAMPSHIRE DAYS BY W. H. HUDSON 1923 J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. LONDON & TORONTO PARIS: J. M. DENT ET FILS All rights reserved PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN INSCRIBED TO SIR EDWARD AND LADY GREY NORTHUMBRIANS WITH HAMPSHIRE WRITTEN IN THEIR HEARTS CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Autumn in the New Forest--Red colour in mammals--November mildness--A house by the Boldre--An ideal spot for small birds--Abundance of nests--Small mammals and the weasel's part--Voles and mice--Hornet and bank-vole--Young shrews--A squirrel's visit--Green woodpecker's drumming-tree--Drumming of other species--Beauty of great spotted woodpecker--The cuckoo controversy--A cuckoo in a robin's nest--Behaviour of the cuckoo--Extreme irritability--Manner of ejecting eggs and birds from the nest--Loss of irritability--Insensibility of the parent robins--Discourse on mistaken kindness, pain and death in nature, the annual destruction of bird life, and the young cuckoo's instinct. CHAPTER II. Between the Boldre and the Exe--Abuse of the New Forest--Character of the population--New Forest code and conscience--A radical change foreshadowed--Tenacity of the Forest fly--Oak woods of Beaulieu--Swallow and pike--Charm of Beaulieu--Instinctive love of open spaces--A fragrant heath--Nightjars--Snipe--Redshanks--Pewits--Cause of sympathy with animals--Grasshopper and spider--A rapacious fly--Melancholy moods--Evening on the heath--"World-strangeness"--Pixie mounds--Death and burial--The dead in the barrows--Their fear of the living. CHAPTER III. A favourite New Forest haunt--Summertide--Young blackbird's call--Abundance of blackbirds and thrushes, and destruction of young--Starlings breeding--The good done by starlings--Perfume of the honeysuckle--Beauty of the hedge rose--Cult of the rose--Lesser whitethroat--His low song--Common and lesser whitethroat--In the woods--A sheet of bracken--Effect of broken surfaces--Roman mosaics at Silchester--Why mosaics give pleasure--Woodland birds--Sound of insect life--Abundance of flies--Sufferings of cattle--Dark Water--Biting and teasing flies--Feeding the fishes and fiddlers with flies. CHAPTER IV. The stag-beetle--Evening flight--Appearance on the wing--Seeking a mate--Stag and doe in a hedge--The plough-man and the beetle--A stag-beetle's fate--Concerning tenacity of life--Life appearances after death--A serpent's skin--A dead glow-worm's light--Little summer tragedies--A snaky spot--An adder's basking-place--Watching adders--The adder's senses--Adder's habits not well known--A pair of anxious pewits--A dead young pewit--Animals without knowledge of death--Removal of the dead by ants--Gould's observations on ants. CHAPTER V.