ON SURREY HILLS.*
ALL who know and love—and who is there who knows and does not love P—that wonderful stretch of heaths, downs, and uplands which lies within but thirty miles of London, will welcome On Surrey Hills with intense pleasure. There they will find a thousand pleasant and curious things about that fascinating district set forth by a writer who has as intimate a knowledge of the county as Richard Jefferies, and who has no small share in Jefferies's charm of thought and style. Judged on a priori considerations, the "Surrey Hills "—that is, the district which is bounded by and includes the North Downs and the Hog's Back on the north, Leith Hill, Holmbury Hill, the hills over Godalming, Blackdown, and Hind Head on the south, and ends at Reigate on the east, and Aldershot on the west—ought to be far too near London to be real country at all. By all the rules, it should be " suburban," —a mere park to the Metropolis, out of which all the charm that belongs to an unsophisticated country-side has long ago vanished. The hedgerows should be trim, the streams con- fined within straight banks, where they are not arched in, and the green lanes and " droves " thrown into the fields to save waste. The people, too, should be suburban in mind and speech, and nothing but the School-Board dialect should be heard in the land. Yet, God be thanked! the uplands that lie between London and the sea are not the least what one might reasonably expect them to be. In spite of all the villas and all the Cockneys, in spite of the fir-plantations, the picnics, and the beanfeasts, the bicycles and the brakes, the Surrey Hills still contain some of the wildest as well as the most beautiful scenery in England. There are places not twenty-two miles from London as the crow flies, where the giant yew-trees, —as Mr. Stevenson says of the rocks in the Hebrides,—stand in troops like cattle, with the short, sheep-nibbled turf of the Downs winding between their trunks like an emerald stream. Again, there are " deep forest glades " as near, which recall the "full great oath" by " oak and ash and thorn " which Glasgerion swore when he would put the truth of what he spoke above all question. What was the special sanctity of the three trees combined, let the students of folk-lore determine; but he who sees them growing together as they grow on parts of the North Downs will not wonder that they received a special reverence. Mr. Grant Allen, who knows what he is talking about when botany and archaeology are his theme, declares that the condition of the place called Fairyland—not, we take it, a Cockney-christened Fairyland, but a spot where some fierce, blue-eyed Saxon may have come upon a gathering of a pigmy aboriginal tribe which haunted the Andredswold—is to this day what it was when Phoenician merchants brought their staple along the Tinway—the immemorial track which passes along- the North Downs in its course from Cornwall to the Isle of Thanet. Nothing can have changed, for the plough has never been over the surface, and the blackthorns, the wild pears, the wild cherries, the may-trees, the oaks, the yews, and the ashes grow as they will and as they can. All that any one has done to Fairyland and the land just round it, is to feed a few sheep on the grass and cut a little bracken. No doubt this absolute • On Surrey Hide. By "A Son of the Marshes." Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons. 1851.
wildness, combined with an aboriginal woodland growth, is confined to a few favoured spots—as a rule, the untouched land is mere heath—but even in places with less right to call themselves Nature's authentic fields, there is plenty of wildness and beauty. The great stretches of moor on Hind Head and Blackdown, and the deep beech-wood glades at Combe Bottom, or on the northern slopes of the Downs over Horsley, are in their own way hardly less beautiful than the hawthorn thickets of Merrow. And not only are Surrey uplands beautiful by Nature. The people are, as we have said, real country people, have country ways, and talk the Wessex dialect. You may still be told to follow the path down to the " housen," and still a piece of smooth green grass is a " sward," and a sudden storm of rain a " scud." It is this country and these people that are dealt with in On Surrey Hills, and the reader will indeed be hard to please who cannot draw much pleasure from the book. Only one thing we miss. If life requires an art, so does the country, and that art is compounded of the feeling for natural beauty, for the characteristics of country folk, for animal life, and lastly, for archaeology. " A Son of the Marshes " fails in the last. He seems to care little for the men who built the camps and barrows, for the Kelt, the Phoenician, the Roman, the Saxon, or the Dane, and no echoes from "the drums and tramplings of three conquests" seem to reach his ears. We must not, however, look a gift-horse in the mouth, and will therefore only pray for some Dryasdust scholiast to annotate his pages with archaeological reflections.
It is difficult to know what to quote by way of example from On Surrey Hills. Characteristic of the author's sympathy and humour is the passage describing an interview with a badger. "A Son of the Marshes " is very fond of the badger that " frolicsome, bear-like little creature," as he calls him, and thus describes an excellent opportunity he once got to watch one at close quarters :—
" One morning last summer (1890), I was out for a stroll through the woods, when a man hailed me from the door of a cottage that stood just on the outskirts of one of them. He told me he had got a queer critter that had come to his garden, and to his mind it was very like a little pig—in fact, `lust off he reckoned it was one o' his young snorkers lied got out. He's gone to his home now,' he added ; it's close handy to my garden. About seven of an evenin' he cums up reg'lar ; I be mortal curious about it—can ye tell us what it is ? ' At about seven o'clock I made my way gently up to the edge of the man's garden, and it was not long before the snorker-like critter' made its appearance. He seemed to have no fear—he had evidently never been disturbed since he first made his home close to; and had he not been attracted by the grunts of the cottager's young snorkers, his proximity would never have been suspected. As it was, he gambolled about among the fern in the full joy of his nature, perfectly fearlessly—a strange combination of the bear and the pig in all his movements. If you have only seen the badger in a zoological collection, you have no idea what the creature is when he enjoys perfect liberty. After eating something he had rooted up, our friend dashed down into the open meadow adjoining the wood. What in the name o' wonder be it ?' asked the man.— A badger, and a fine fellow too.'—' Will he du any mischief to the crap in the garden
Not he,' I replied.= Then I shan't meddle with un. I likes to
see un cut his capers. Now what do he live on ? Mice, beetles, snails, and wasps' nests that he digs out.'—' What—wapses! he's a good un. Cuss them things ! they du work my fruit. Any- thing else do he eat ?'—' Yes, mushrooms.'—' Do he ? he wunt hey 'em all, then, of he stops here till they cums out.'—' He will kill and eat hedgehogs too.'—' Then he's a right good un. I shan't meddle with he.'—For reasons of my own I did not tell our friend that the creature would also eat rabbits. I knew the man had the privilege of catching all that visited his ground. Nor did I warn him that his pullets might fare badly if one of them happened to stray near the badger's quarters when he was hungry. In my pursuit of natural history studies, I have found it often best not to enter into any subject too minutely with the unlearned. One is apt to be the loser by so doing. 'Live and let live' is my motto. After interviewing the badger I inspected his home: it was a very pleasant and secure one, under the roots of a clump of firs, on a sandy knoll, within one minute's walk of our friend's back-door. The children had noticed it first, and told their father about a little strange pig they had run after.. This proves that it is only when driven by persecution that wild creatures fear man."
It is to be noted that nothing is said about the smell of the badger. Is this a base invention of the enemy, or a fact which it was thought better to suppress in the badger's interest P We would willingly quote, did space allow, the curious account which the author gives of seeing crossbows used to kill game with. Again, we should like to quote his account of the disgust felt by a farmer's family at the idea of eating wood- cock. "Tie a real wonder as gentlefolks doesn't pizen them- selves," was the comment of those who were thankful to say they had not " got to eat such Frenchified muck as that.' Woodcock live on frogs ; Frenchmen eat frogs ; therefore wood- cock are Frenchified,—so ran the argument. Neither this, however, nor the delightful fishing-story of Marksman and the " owlets," nor the account' of viper oil, can be quoted here, but must be left to the reader to explore for himself. Before, however, leaving the book, we must extract one more passage, that which deals with the habits of the fox, and incidentally recounts the nature of a hare's toilet :—
"In Surrey, Sussex, and also in parts of Kent, the roads run through dry banks covered with the brush tangle peculiar to such localities. Here rabbits burrow in the sand, or sandy loam, of which they are composed. Now, though hares, rabbits, pheasants, and partridges like cover to a certain extent, they do not like it when it is wet. So, directly the sun has dried up the roads, out they slip from the covers under the park-land palings, and on to the roads—the hares to dot up and down, flecking the sand off their hind-feet in order to dry them, and the pheasants and part- ridges to sun themselves, and to scuffle in the dry sand under the overhanging banks Reynard knows all about this, and he will hide himself in a patch of fern or broom, and there remain until a chance of capture offers. If Kitty Wren or a chaffinch or a tit does not see him, he will be all right ; but if one or the other marks him, the alarm-note is sounded, and this acts like magic, for from all quarters rush birds that have been before invisible— at least they have not been seen before on the banks. Jays, missel-thrushes, blackbirds, common thrushes, and the finches, all make common cause against the fox. Even the shrikes leave off beetle-hunting and chatter their loudest, with bowed heads and upfiirted tails, making common cause with the finches. Directly the row is over they would not have the least objection to kill and eat these if they could only get the chance. The upshot of it all is that it gets too warm for Reynard's comfort, and he makes tracks for a quieter neighbourhood. If he takes across the park- lands, all the rooks that are feeding there will follow and buffet him -until he reaches cover. It is not always like this, however. He hides himself so cunningly, as a rule, that all prospers with his manoeuvres. For one thing, he takes the greatest care to pre- vent the wind from blowing his peculiar odour in the direction of the creatures he is bent on capturing. The hare may have dried his long hind-feet, so beautifully clothed with hair, to his complete satisfaction, and he thinks he will now devote a little time to his ears, face, and coat in general. For this purpose he brings his handy fore-feet into use, with which he also boxes to perfection, when he has any slight difference to settle with a rival. It is a most interesting and amusing sight to see a hare perform his toilet. First the long ears are adroitly manipulated, then the face, and those most important features of use and adornment, the whiskers, the sensitive tips of which tell him to a nicety whether the hole in the hedge or the break in the park palings is wide enough for his body to pass through, let the night be ever so dark and gloomy. There he sits, upright, without thought of danger, on his powerful hind-quarters, busily washing his face. He has almost finished his toilet, and is just giving the last gentle strokings to his whiskers, when, with a bound and a rush, some- thing crosses over to him. There is a momentary scuffle, and a whirl of sand, then one long shriek of Aunt ! Aunt ! and all is over, far more quickly than one can write about it. Reynard carries his quarry up the opposite bank, and into cover, with as much ease and in the same fashion that the retriever chained to his kennel at the keeper's cottage close at hand would carry a rabbit. I have often seen his earth with the tokens of what he has taken scattered about, but I have not often seen him there. When the cubs begin to eat flesh, one may have a chance of seeing them really at home."
There is a true sense of the humour of animal life in this quotation, a sense apparent throughout the work. No one who loves Surrey will fail to appreciate On Surrey Hills, and if we mistake not, most of those who read it will earnestly desire that the author should write again on the same fascinating theme. We do not doubt but that he has plenty more to tell us.
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