The willow-wren keeps you company in the pollards, the rare kingfisher loves the chalk stream, and there is nothing in which the corncrake more delights than to grind out his monotonous love notes--for all the world like a gigantic salmon reel--in a water-meadow put up for hay. But even the Itchen does not exist wholly for the trout, and like other chalk streams submits itself to the hand of the irrigator. And over the broad meadows its numerous runlets fertilize, it is always pleasant to pick one's way by such paths as bridge the numerous channels spouting and shining, fresh, cool, and lusty in the lush grass, be the weather ever so torrid. Avington Park, where the Merry Monarch and Nell Gwyn spent some time, with its long stretches of fringing wood, is a prominent feature upon the east bank of the river between Winchester and Alresford. And as you draw near the latter, one of the three streams that form the Itchen comes pouring down rapid and shallow over a radiant gravelly bed. Follow it up for a mile, and lying low in trees, with a park spreading above it on the one side and an old church perched high upon the other, is the doubly famous mansion of Tichborne. For as the ancient abode of probably the oldest landed family of distinction in Hampshire it would call for notice. But much more than on such account as this would it appeal to any middle-aged wight whose memory has not badly failed him, for that _cause célèbre_ of the early 'seventies, which lasted for so many years, rent England into factions, broke up families, and severed friendships in the amazing partisanship and excitement it engendered. Alresford is a pleasant, old-fashioned, wide, open, typical south-country market-town. Beneath it is a pool or mere, covering, perhaps, three or four acres. Though not literally such, this might be roughly held as the source of the Itchen, since above it the river loses all claim to consequence, while below it come in the Candover and the Tichborne, brooks of equal volume to itself. Yet more, for, as already mentioned, there are several curious welling springs in the outskirts of Alresford which contribute almost as much water to the river as its three parent streams.