* * * THE NEW ZOO.
If there is any place more English—in name as in nature— than Whipsnade it must be difficult to find. What queer crooked little roads twist through " happy homely Hert- fordshire," as Lamb called it, and its little farms. When you have thridded the maze, the grass in front of the few cottages has the qualities of a characteristic village green. When you reach the top of the Down come two groves, both inside the pale of the Zoo, one with undergrowth where pheasants and such-like birds of many persuasions run about, underneath mixed trees. These are now freely hung with nesting boxes, some already occupied (for our tits at any rate seem to build earlier and earlier each year). Beyond this is a larger but open wood of fine oak trees and a floor very thick with both primrose and bluebell. Beyond this you reach the close, short springy grass of a Downland wholly characteristic of Southern England with the chalk showing through here and there. Last, and certainly not least, as you stand on the edge of the slope that is almost a cliff you see a mosaic of field and wood and hedgerow stretching for twenty miles and more into the soft distance of the home counties.
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