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228 the hanger. We doubt whether White felt much interest in the news-letter when it reached him; no topic which it touched upon could be so important as a rumoured discovery of hibernating swallows in the next parish. How mild, too, his ambitions—that the "falco" which he sends up to the authorities to be named may turn out to be a new species,—that his friends may find something of interest in the basket of fresh-water fishlets from Selborne's brook, which he despatches by the London coach neatly packed in water-weeds. With what modest, yet honest pride, too, he describes his new "locustella, or grasshopper lark." For those were the palmy days when even a stay-at-home naturalist might aspire to add his quota to the British fauna.

It is a fine morning in November as we leave the train at Liss, on the South-Western line, and make enquiries as to the way to Selborne. After walking for perhaps three-quarters of an hour, we approach a fine, bold-looking hill, whose steep, chalky side has been a landmark all the way. With the exception of this precipitous south-eastern face, it is covered with beech-trees, giving an example of the hanging woods, or "hangers," so characteristic of the district. On enquiry of a labourer, this proves to be Nore Hill, "that noble chalk promontory," as White calls it, "remarkable for sending forth two streams into two different seas." A number of wood-pigeons, flying