There were towns in the Forest then, notwithstanding--some of them busy centres as now; but the majority peaceful villages or hamlets; country houses, too, some of pretentious style--mansions, and castles. A few of these yet exist, if in ruins; others known only by record; and still others totally gone out of history--lost even to legend. The Forest roads were then but bridle paths, or trackways for the pack-horse; no fencing on either side; the narrow list of trodden ground running centrally between wide borderings of grass-grown sward; so that the traveller, if a horseman, had the choice of soft turf for the hoofs of his roadster. Only on the main routes between the larger towns, and those going outward, was there much traffic. The bye-roads had all the character of green lanes, narrow, but now and then debouching into glades, and openings of larger area, where the small Forest sheep-- progeny of the Welsh mountaineers--browsed upon pasture, spare and close-cropped, in the companionship of donkeys, and perchance a deer, or it might be a dozen, moving among them in amiable association. The sheep and the donkeys are there still, but the deer, alas! are gone. Many birds that built their nests in the Forest trees, or soared above, are there no more. The eagle makes not now its eyrie in the Coldwell Rocks or soars over Symonds' Yat; even the osprey is but rarely seen pursuing its finny prey in the lower waters of either Wye or Severn. Still, the _falconidae_ are to this day represented in the Forest district by numerous species, by the kite and kestrel; the buzzard, Common, Rough-legged, and Honey; by the goshawk and sparrow-hawk; the hobby and harriers; and if last, not least, in estimation, the graceful diminutive merlin. Birds of bright feathers, too, still flit through the Forest's trees; the noisy jay, the gaudy, green woodpecker, and the two spotted species; with the kingfisher of cerulean hue; while its glades are gladdened by the sweet song of the thrush, the bolder lay of the blackbird; in springtide, the matchless melody of the nightingale--the joyous twittering of linnets and finches, mingling with the softer notes of the cushat and turtle-dove. ------------------------------------------------------------------------