I ■■•■■■ 
 
 514-3 
 
 now I Managed 
 
 My Estate 
 
 Hi 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FROM 
 
 Weed ford Patterson 
 
a Cornell University 
 '§ Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 35331 32 
 
HOW I MANAGED AND IMPROVED 
 MY ESTATE. 
 
HOW I MANAGED AND 
 
 IMPROVED MY 
 
 ESTATE 
 
 Reprinted from the Saint James's Gazette. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET 
 
 COVENT GARDEN 
 
 1886 
 
CHISWICK PRESS : — C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS 
 COURT, CHANCERY LANE. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I. Choice of an Estate i 
 
 II. Underwoods 15 
 
 III. Timber 27 
 
 IV. Building and Quarrying .... 41 
 V. Making^ Grounds 55 
 
 VI. Farming and Shooting 69 
 
 VII. Fishponds and Aviaries .... 81 
 
 VIII. Conclusion 95 
 
CHOICE OF AN ESTATE. 
 
HOW I MANAGED AND IMPROVED 
 MY ESTATE. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 CHOICE OF AN ESTATE. 
 
 OME twenty years ago, having ob- 
 tained the means of satisfying my 
 longing to return to country life, in 
 which I had been mostly bred, I 
 gave up my London occupations and looked 
 about for a piece of land which would suit 
 me ; and, after several journeys into different 
 parts of Sussex, my favourite county, I found 
 an estate, or rather two contiguous estates, 
 just after my mind. I gave ;^ 14,000 for 
 them ; farmed them and managed the wood- 
 
4 CHOICE OF AN ESTATE. [l. 
 
 lands almost entirely myself, obtaining during 
 the whole time I held the land considerably 
 higher returns than I could have obtained in 
 rent ; sold a thousand pounds' worth of timber; 
 spent about ^5,500 on improving house and 
 land ; and within fifteen years afterwards had 
 parted with the place, which I had made too 
 grand for my use, for ;^2 7,000: the whole 
 transaction leaving me ^9,500 richer than I 
 was before in money, and richer also in a 
 great deal of pleasant experience and country 
 knowledge, some of which it may be worth 
 while to note down, 
 
 I believe that the gentleman from whom I 
 bought the greater part of the land had never 
 even seen it. He was one of the wealthiest 
 men in England, and had large estates in 
 other counties ; and, in selling this far-out- 
 lying bit, did so at an estimate of its mere 
 agricultural value and the amount of the 
 timber it carried. 
 
 I saw at a glance that, with its deep and 
 beautifully wooded ravines, its superb views, 
 its mile and a half of trout-stream, and its 
 neighbourhood to London, I could not make 
 a mistake in buying it at agricultural value ; 
 so did so at once. And, finding that the 
 
I-J CHOICE OF AN ESTATE. 5 
 
 estate which ran for about a mile alongside of 
 it on the other side of the turnpike-road, and 
 which had on it a house in which I could live, 
 was for sale, I at once bought that also ; 
 though I had to pay much more for it, in 
 proportion to what I thought its real value, 
 than I gave for the first purchase. 
 
 The chief picturesque feature of this second 
 portion of my bargain was a long wooded dell, 
 or " ghyll ", (as it is called in Sussex as well 
 as in the north), not nearly so striking, in- 
 deed, as the ravine which ran parallel to it, 
 about a mile off, on the other side of the high- 
 road, but still very beautiful, and with about 
 half-a-mile of trout-stream in the bottom. 
 
 The house upon it had been a very old 
 farm-house of large size ; but the man who 
 had inhabited and possessed it before me had 
 added a vulgar stucco front to it and raised a 
 large pile of ill-built stabling just before the 
 principal face. The old farm-buildings re- 
 mained close to the house, the farm-yard 
 coming up to its very walls. There was no 
 view from its windows, all the space in front 
 being choked with timber. 
 
 Between the stables and farm-buildings, and 
 at a distance of about 200 yards from the 
 
6 CHOICE OF AN ESTATE. [l. 
 
 front, was a deep damp depression of about 
 two acres, filled with such scraggy underwood 
 as would grow in it. From this first depres- 
 sion the ground fell away, in a series of un- 
 equal hollows, which at once suggested fish- 
 ponds to my mind, to the " ghyll ; " further 
 on lay field after field of beautifully modulated 
 ground, but so bound in and blinded with 
 thickly timbered " shaws " that it was impos- 
 sible to guess whether or not there might be 
 beyond them a view of the great line of airy 
 South Downs which was the chief grace of 
 the views from the other property. 
 
 What gave the chief character, at the time 
 of my purchase, to this part of the estate, was 
 the approach to the house by a winding 
 avenue, about a quarter of a mile long, of old 
 oaks, having a fine clear fish-pond of about 
 an acre in extent in a little oak wood along- 
 side, with a pretty wooded islet in the midst 
 of it. A tolerably good stone-built lodge 
 stood at the junction of the avenue and the 
 high road. Altogether, the spot was well 
 suited for a mansion of " county " rank, though 
 at the time I had no thought of constructing 
 one there. 
 
 This part of the property, about 1 20 acres, 
 
I.] CHOICE OF AN ESTATE. 7 
 
 being all in hand, together with about 170 
 acres of woods, upon my first purchase, I re- 
 solved to farm and manage myself, leaving 
 one farm of about 100 acres, and several small 
 holdings of from four to twenty acres, in the 
 hands of their then tenants. 
 
 I made acquaintance with my principal 
 tenant one Sunday morning. I found him 
 mending a wheel in his cart-shed. He had 
 inherited the tenancy of the farm from his 
 father, and held it at a rent of considerably 
 less than half its value, as I found from offers 
 which were made to me by persons in the 
 neighbourhood, who rightly guessed that I 
 should soon have to turn him out of his 
 tenancy. It was the old story. Having to 
 pay a ridiculously low rent, he had found him- 
 self unable to pay any, and had for years 
 satisfied his late invisible landlord by sending 
 in annually a bill for fencing and ditching the 
 woods which amounted to or exceeded his 
 nominal rent. 
 
 The house belonging to this farm was a 
 massive stone building of Tudor times, ex- 
 ceedingly out of repair. It had once been 
 the house of one of the ironmasters of the 
 district, at the time Sussex was a great iron- 
 
8 CHOICE OF AN ESTATE. [l. 
 
 producing county. Most of the landholders 
 a hundred and fifty years ago seem to have 
 been ironmasters ; traces of smelting-works 
 being scattered all over the county, and still 
 yielding valuable stores of " clinkers," which 
 are saleable at high rates to the parish autho- 
 rities for roads. I found mines of these 
 clinkers on my own land, used them largely 
 for my own purposes, and sold still larger 
 quantities for as much as 4^. a yard. 
 
 In these diggings I found one or two spiked 
 cannon-balls and other antiquities, which I 
 gave to a local museum, and on one occasion 
 turned up a slab of iron weighing about a 
 quarter of a ton. Those great tracts of sandy 
 desert called Ashdown and St. Leonards 
 Forests were, almost within the memory of 
 living men, real forests ; but they were de- 
 nuded of their trees for the use of these iron- 
 furnaces, which would probably still be alight 
 but for the want of fuel, iron ore of fine quality 
 being yet abundant a very little way below 
 the surface. 
 
 About a mile of the boundary of my estate, 
 which lay well together and was more than 
 four miles round, was skirted by a part of 
 Ashdown Forest, on which several squatters 
 
I.] CHOICE OF AN ESTATE. 9 
 
 had settled and established proprietorial rights 
 by long occupation. I shortly found that these 
 people were inconvenient neighbours. They 
 were not content with poaching my woods, 
 which lay adjacent to their holdings, but they 
 were in the habit of cutting them down. 
 
 On one occasion, when I was rambling in 
 one of these woods, I was surprised to see a 
 space of about a quarter of an acre of what 
 had been thriving underwood looking very 
 sickly and drooping ; and found on examina- 
 tion that " bats " of six or eight feet had been 
 cut from the lower portions of the stems, and 
 the tops left standing in their places, so that 
 no one could have noticed the theft until 
 the leaves had begun to wither. These 
 woods abounded with dogwood, which is very 
 valuable for making gunpowder — a faggot 
 selling, if I remember rightly, for two shillings. 
 I found it very difficult to retain this source 
 of revenue for my own use. 
 
 I was somewhat surprised, when I first 
 came into possession, at receiving from one 
 or two of these my humble neighbours offers 
 of absurdly high rent for patches of two or 
 three acres of very poor grass-land. I after- 
 wards found that these were poachers, who. 
 
lO CHOICE OF AN ESTATE. [l. 
 
 if they could have obtained such " shootings," 
 would, as others of their brethren did, have 
 taken out licences regularly and defied game- 
 keepers or policemen to prove that the game 
 found on their persons had not been lawfully 
 come by. 
 
 In other respects I found these people very 
 simple, amiable, and companionable persons. 
 As Christianity did not appear to have ever 
 been promulgated among the " foresters," they 
 carried out " the good old rule, the simple plan," 
 without any derangement of conscience or loss 
 of self-respect. They paid their fines or went 
 to prison for poaching or wood-stealing, with- 
 out entertaining the least animosity against 
 those who subjected them to these incon- 
 veniences. A youth whom I had imprisoned 
 for a fortnight for being found on my land 
 with a lot of young partridges in his pocket, 
 came quite cheerfully to ask work of me the 
 morning after his release ; and I found that 
 as a rule there was a good-humoured under- 
 standing of this " take and give " kind between 
 the peasants or squatters and the proprietors 
 of the soil. 
 
 This mutual good feeling extended itself 
 even to the magisterial presence and the 
 
I.] CHOICE OF AN ESTATE, II 
 
 intercourse of keepers and poachers, A 
 man who was required to pay fine and costs 
 to the amount of £^ ijs. for shooting my 
 pheasants, paid it saying, " Quite fair, your 
 
 worship ; I have had sixty head off Mr, 's 
 
 land this year ; " and as the man who looked 
 after my shooting was chatting with a friend 
 walking alongside a cart on the high-road, the 
 latter lifted a sack and showed a heap of 
 game, saying, " Them be your birds, and 
 there's the white un," pointing to a white 
 pheasant which I had often seen in the woods. 
 
 The peculiar views of the squatters with re- 
 gard to property did not, however, go beyond 
 game and wood. I was never robbed by them 
 in any other way. While I was remodelling my 
 house and numbers of them were constantly 
 employed as labourers, many tons of old 
 sheet-lead were left openly exposed to theft 
 in the farm-yard during many months ; but 
 not a pound of it was taken, though its value 
 was, of course, well known. 
 
 The foresters had another moral peculiarity. 
 They were for the most part always ready to 
 sell " afifidavies," made to the fashion desired 
 by the purchaser, at extremely low prices : 
 four times less, in fact, than the Aston figure. 
 
12 CHOICE OF AN ESTATE. [l. 
 
 For example, if the bailiff of a neighbouring 
 owner wished to secure the high hedge of a 
 shaw of the next proprietor, as a defence 
 against the wind, and the proof of the pro- 
 prietorship lay, not in the often carelessly- 
 drawn up plans of the estate, but in long 
 tradition maintained by the cutting of the 
 hedge and making of the ditch by the owner, 
 such bailiff had only to pay half-a-crown each 
 to two or three old foresters, and they would 
 solemnly testify to the fact, that although the 
 hedge and ditch had certainly been made the 
 last time by the person asserting possession, 
 yet that had been by mistake, for they them- 
 selves had made the ditch and hedge the 
 time before, perhaps twenty-five years back, 
 for the owner whose bailiff now required 
 the protection of the hedge. If the person 
 whose property was so attacked was unpre- 
 pared to use similar means of defence, there 
 was nothing for him to do but to " cave in." 
 
 As with the poaching and wood-stealing, 
 there was nothing unconscientious or under- 
 hand in the matter. And this Arcadian sim- 
 plicity seems, as I have said, to have been 
 due to the almost total absence of a soul-dis- 
 turbing faith. Baptism was not commonly 
 
I. J CHOICE OF AN ESTATE. 1 3 
 
 practised among even the more settled of the 
 country-folk. My principal tenant could only 
 be persuaded by my wife to have his child 
 christened upon its being represented to him 
 that, at all events, no harm would come of it, 
 and on condition that she would be at the 
 trouble of getting the parson to come from a 
 distance to do it; and when I asked my 
 ploughman if he had had his baby baptized, 
 his answer was, " No, I don't hold with bap- 
 tism ; it never did me no good." 
 
UNDERWOODS. 
 
Chapter II. 
 UNDERWOODS. 
 
 N Sussex, which is perhaps the 
 most thickly wooded county in 
 England, it is the custom, as else- 
 where, for landed proprietors to 
 keep the bulk of the woods in their own 
 hands. But tenants of Sussex farms, which 
 in most cases contain a certain extent of hop- 
 land (usually in the proportion of about one 
 acre in twelve or fifteen), are commonly al- 
 lowed to hold a piece of wood-land sufficient 
 to supply them with hop-poles. Each acre of 
 hops (of 1,250 "hills" to the acre) requires 
 3,750 poles; and these in ordinary farms, 
 where boiling in creosote is not practised, 
 
 c 
 
1 8 UNDERWOODS. [ll. 
 
 have to be entirely renewed once in four or 
 five years ; the time varying with the more or 
 less durable nature of the poles, according as 
 they consist of larch, oak, chestnut, ash, or 
 birch : the Sussex woods commonly consisting 
 mainly of the four last, larch scarcely ever ap- 
 pearing as hop-poles, except on especially 
 highly cultivated farms, on account of their 
 greater cost. For larch-poles do not grow 
 crop after crop from " stubs " as the other 
 kinds do, but have to be planted on new 
 ground every ten or twelve years. Growing 
 larch-poles is sometimes a very profitable 
 thing, a single acre having been known to 
 bear a crop of twelve years' growth worth 
 ;!^ 1 20 ; but capital and long waiting are re- 
 quired for their culture, and for these Sussex 
 farmers are not famous. 
 
 There can be no fixed proportion, on Sussex 
 farms, between wood-land and hops ; for one 
 acre of wood-land may grow ten times as 
 many poles as another, according to its free- 
 dom from or embarrassment by larger timber, 
 the number and health of the "stubs," and the 
 nature of the wood. Ash and chestnut give 
 by far the most abundant cuttings. In one 
 wood I know there is about' half an acre of 
 
II.] UNDERWOODS. 1 9 
 
 unmixed ash which gives more poles than any 
 five acres of the remainder. 
 
 Sussex woods are for the most part very 
 ill-kept up, usually not yielding half, or even a 
 quarter, of the timber and underwood which 
 they might be made to yield. From such ob- 
 servations as I have been able to make, I should 
 say that in this county, as a rule, at least three 
 or four acres of woods are required for the 
 supply of poles for one acre of hops. 
 
 The tenant has, of course, no control over 
 the timber either of his hedgerows, " shaws," 
 or woods. This remains, together with the 
 bulk of the wood-lands, in the hands of the 
 proprietor ; and, if he indulges in the delight- 
 ful occupation of looking after his own in- 
 terests, there can be no part of his property 
 capable of giving him more pleasure and 
 amusement. In the management of the 
 home-farm he is compelled to leave much to 
 the skill and still more to the honesty of his 
 bailiff, who is likely, if he is good for much, to 
 be jealous of the master's interference to any 
 great extent in such things as cropping the 
 land, cattle-feeding, and the like ; and to 
 whose honesty the proprietor is obliged to 
 trust all, or nearly all, sale transactions. But 
 
20 UNDERWOODS. [ll. 
 
 it is not so with the wood-lands, for the plant- 
 ing and sale of the produce of which no bailiff 
 or woodreeve is necessary, unless the woods 
 are very large in extent and the master very 
 lazy in acquiring the little necessary know- 
 ledge and very indifferent to the amount of 
 the income returned. A gentleman might 
 easily and profitably superintend personally the 
 planting-up, draining, path and road-making, 
 and timber measuring and selling, upon 500 
 acres of wood — which in Sussex would usually 
 indicate an estate of perhaps 2,000 acres — 
 without any assistance, and with little more 
 knowledge than a man of good sense picks up, 
 almost without being aware of it, by living in 
 the country and on his own land. My 170 
 acres of woods gave me almost daily occupa- 
 tion during each late autumn, winter, and 
 early spring — that half of the year in which 
 nearly all land operations go on most 
 briskly. 
 
 These woods had been long neglected. 
 They carried only four thousand pounds' 
 worth of timber upon ground which might 
 have borne ten times as much ; the under- 
 woods had been cut, crop after crop, at the 
 usual intervals of ten or twelve years, without 
 
II.] UNDERWOODS. 2 1 
 
 any proper supervision to secure that a suffi- 
 cient number of " tillers " should be left for 
 future timber. It is a rule, when patches of 
 underwood are sold, that the purchaser cuts it 
 down, but leaves all trees which may have 
 sown themselves since the last cutting stand- 
 ing ; and, should there not be enough of these 
 seedlings to supply the gaps in the large 
 timber, then a healthy shoot from a " stub " 
 should be left here and there ; but my woods 
 consisted wholly of more or less ripe timber 
 and underwood, and there were therefore large 
 planting operations before me. 
 
 The underwood also had suffered greatly by 
 neglect. Though mostly standing upon in- 
 clines, and therefore easily drained, the old 
 trenches had not been cleared for fifty years 
 or more, and could scarcely be traced ; and 
 much ground which ought to have borne good 
 crops of ash or chestnut had run into willows, 
 poor birch, stray dogwood, and other marsh- 
 loving growth. The roads for carrying cut 
 timber, if ever there had been any, had disap- 
 peared ; so that whenever timber had been 
 felled (and in Sussex it is the custom to fell 
 the fully ripe trees every time the undergrowth 
 is cut) the "stubs" had been damaged by 
 
2 2 UNDERWOODS. [ll. 
 
 horses, cart-wheels, and the heavy trunks 
 which were dragged over them at random. 
 
 Altogether, these woods — though as beau- 
 tiful as could be wished to look upon (for 
 outside, a wood looks much the same whether 
 it bears £40 or ;^400 an acre in timber), and 
 though better as pleasure-grounds and for 
 sport than if the planting were perfect — 
 afforded as much room for improvement as 
 heart could desire ; and I set about it in 
 earnest as soon as I came into possession. I 
 made timber-roads through the larger woods. 
 This is a simple work, consisting merely in 
 the formation of wide alleys by the removal 
 of trees and the roots of the undergrowth. 
 
 The drainage I found very costly ; for, the 
 ground being uneven, the open trenches had 
 often to be made very deep. I therefore 
 drained only the worst spots. Planting could, 
 of course, only be done as spaces of ground 
 were cleared by the annual cutting of the 
 underwood — that is, on my ground, at the 
 rate of from ten to twenty acres a year. 
 
 During my period of possession I planted 
 about 120,000 forest trees. This sounds like 
 a great undertaking ; but it was really a much 
 less portentous thing than those may imagine 
 
II.] UNDERWOODS, 23 
 
 who would infer that, after thirty years or so, 
 I should have found myself, in return for a 
 commensurate outlay, the proprietor of that 
 number of well-grown timber-trunks, in addi- 
 tion to those already standing in my woods. 
 
 In planting up old underwoods, at least five 
 plants out of ten expire under the difficulties 
 of their position. When the " stubs " are 
 wde apart, the ground is usually choked with 
 rank grass and briars, which cannot be kept 
 down, and which stifle all but the strongest 
 young trees before they are able to strike 
 their roots well and get their heads into the air. 
 When the growth of underwood is compara- 
 tively thick, and there are consequently no 
 grass or brambles, the same result is produced 
 by the growth of the original underwood itself, 
 which in a couple of years overtops and ex- 
 cludes from the needful air and light all but 
 the most sturdy youngsters. 
 
 Nor is the expense of planting such a 
 number of trees anything like what the re- 
 formers of our land laws and other persons of 
 exclusively urban experience might suppose. 
 For planting up underwoods, larch, ash, and 
 chestnut (oak, birch, and beech are very 
 seldom used) should be about four feet high ; 
 
24 UNDERWOODS. [ll. 
 
 and for such plants you pay at the best forest 
 nurseries — such as Messrs. Wood's, of Mares- 
 field — from 255'. to 30i'. a thousand. An 
 active man is able to plant, if I remember 
 rightly, from seven hundred to a thousand a 
 day. 
 
 It is of no use to plant underwoods with 
 trees of larger growth than I have mentioned. 
 They would be more likely to be suffocated 
 than the smaller ones ; for a year's addition to 
 the age of a plant renders it much less able to 
 strike its roots freely. A larch of two feet 
 high, planted in the open, would probably 
 soon overtake one of five or six feet, if planted 
 beside it and at the same time. Of all trees 
 ash is the most profitable to plant for under- 
 wood, if the soil be rich and not too dry or 
 damp; for it grows so fast that it can, in 
 favourable circumstances, be cut over twice, 
 while other kinds of wood only give one crop. 
 I had a plot of ash on a piece of rich ground, 
 that gave a crop of poles every five years, 
 which was worth at the rate of at least ;C4Q 
 an acre. But this was a rarity. 
 
 Successful planting requires close and in- 
 telligent supervision. When left to an under- 
 ling, twice as many trees die as when the 
 
I.] UNDERWOODS. 2$ 
 
 vork is properly seen to, especially if the 
 vork is " piece-work " — that is, paid for by 
 he number of trees planted. I found that 
 lothing but my almost constant attendance on 
 he spot could prevent the planters from doing 
 nore than take out a " spit " of earth, stick 
 he tree in one side of the hole, and chuck the 
 ump of earth back again, settling it with one 
 )r two stamps of the heel. Again, if the 
 natter is left to the ordinary labourer, thou- 
 ands of plants, lying ready for planting, may 
 )e killed in one night of frost or one day of 
 Iry east-wind, by neglect of the precaution of 
 overing them with loose earth or at least 
 vith a sack or two. 
 
 Among the many adversities to which 
 'oung plantations are subject, the neighbour-' 
 lood of much ground-game is one of the 
 rorst. I have had a larch plantation entirely 
 iestroyed in one hard winter by being barked 
 ly rabbits or hares. Squirrels are also bad 
 nemies to fir plantations ; but they attack 
 he buds. I could never quite subdue the 
 round-game, though I have sometimes killed 
 hundred head in one day. 
 
 All planting operations, whether for under- 
 wood or large timber, are a work of consider- 
 
26 UNDERWOODS. [ll. 
 
 able time. Underwoods do not begin really 
 to pay until about twenty-six years after 
 planting — that is to say, at the third cutting. 
 The first cutting — though this valuable point 
 is commonly omitted — should be two years 
 after planting, in order to force the young 
 stubs to send up several shoots instead of one. 
 This first cutting is practicable only in a 
 perfectly new plantation, or where the old 
 underwood is so thin that it may be all cut 
 over again, together with the new plants, two 
 years after a crop of underwood has been 
 taken. This, of course, involves a loss of two 
 years' growth in the next crop ; but I found 
 by experience that this sacrifice was well 
 worth making, not only because it allowed of 
 the cutting of the young plants, but still more 
 on account of the immense advantage they 
 thus obtained from the admission of light and 
 air, the want of which is so fatal to the new 
 trees planted among underwood. 
 
TIMBER. 
 
Chapter III. 
 TIMBER. 
 
 HERE are three principal points to 
 be regarded in the management of 
 the large timber of an estate — 
 ornament, profit, and the way in 
 which it affects the profit of underwoods ; and 
 as my timber was thick where it should have 
 been thin, and thin where it should have been 
 thick, I was compelled to consider these points 
 well. The planting of thin wood for timber is 
 involved in planting up the underwoods ; the 
 healthiest young trees being left, when the 
 first crop of underwood is cut, at intervals of 
 from 20 ft. to 25 ft apart. The relative 
 values of timber and underwood differ greatly 
 
30 TIMBER. [ill. 
 
 in different parts of the country. In hop- 
 growing counties like Sussex the underwoods 
 are of more consequence than the timber ; 
 and therefore, as a rule, the Sussex woods do 
 not bear much more timber than is necessary 
 to make them look like woods. Nothing 
 could look more rich and beautiful than my 
 woods, yet the large timber averaged only 
 about ^24 an acre. An acre of land, how- 
 ever, under the best circumstances of soil and 
 aspect, and if planted all at once and kept 
 duly thinned, ought to carry eighty oak-trees, 
 worth ^10 each, at the end of about fifty 
 or sixty years : that is to say, the crop would 
 be worth ;^8oo. 
 
 Such crops have been in England ; but they 
 will probably never be again, for no one in his 
 senses would dream, in a state of political in- 
 stability like ours, of planting any of his land 
 in this way. Oak timber is, indeed, quickly 
 disappearing, and fast-growing " soft wood " 
 taking its place. An oak tree which at fifty 
 years might be worth ;^io is probably not 
 worth above a shilling at twenty ; but fir- 
 poles are useful at all stages of their growth. 
 People in general do not know how quickly 
 the destruction of oak is going on, for the 
 
III.] TIMBER. 3 1 
 
 reasons I have just noted : there is Httle 
 difference in external appearance between an 
 oak wood worth ,^^24 an acre and one worth 
 ;^8oo. 
 
 Sussex oak rarely grows large, but in 
 quality it is the finest in England. I have 
 seldom seen a Sussex oak so large as one 
 which grew on my ground. It was thirteen 
 feet round ; but this would not be a great size 
 in some parts of the country. Not only is 
 Sussex oak exceedingly sound and hard, but 
 it is fast-growing during the comparatively 
 brief period it takes to ripen in this county. 
 I felled one oak which was more than seven 
 feet round at five feet from the earth, and 
 there were only thirty-five rings of annual 
 growth in it ; two or three of these rings indi- 
 cating a growth of more than two inches in 
 the diameter of the tree in one year. In 
 some years the growth of timber, as tested 
 thus by the rings, is three or four times as 
 great as it is in others. 
 
 Very interesting statistics, concerning the 
 growth of timber and its relation to weather 
 and soil and other conditions, might be arrived 
 at by the simple method of collecting and 
 polishing disks out of the trunks of various 
 
32 TIMBER. [in. 
 
 trees, dating the rings and comparing their 
 breadth with the meteorological records of 
 each year. For aught that I know, this may- 
 have been done in Germany, where woodcraft 
 is a science ; but I have never heard of its 
 having been even suggested. 
 
 The action of ivy in diminishing the size of 
 timber is very great. A heavily ivy-bound 
 oak loses about one-third of its natural power 
 of expansion. Few woodreeves attend to 
 this. I did so myself, going through the 
 woods with a bill-hook and chopping through 
 the ivy stems carefully, so that the bark of the 
 tree should not suffer, as I found it often did 
 when I left this work to others. 
 
 Another work I found it expedient to take 
 into my own hands was the measuring of the 
 timber. The usual way, I found, was for the 
 woodreeve or bailiff and the timber merchant 
 to go over the timber together, the merchant 
 measuring the " girth " with his own string, 
 and the bailiff taking note of the size and 
 marking the trees. In selling some timber, I 
 myself accompanied the party, and observed 
 that there were several disadvantages in this 
 plan. The merchant's measuring-string was 
 an old and very much frayed cord, which 
 
III.] TIMBER. 33 
 
 would Stretch two or three inches in as many 
 feet if tightened strongly ; as I fancied that it 
 was when applied to the tree, but not when 
 applied to the measuring rod or line. Again, 
 there was generally a dispute about the quan- 
 tity of timber in the " head " of the tree — that 
 is to say, above the point at which the " girth " 
 of the trunk is seriously diminished by the de- 
 parture of the first large branch. This part 
 of the tree, which often contains a considerable 
 proportion of the whole contents, is always 
 measured by sight ; and the eyes of the mer- 
 chant generally saw less timber than those of 
 the bailiff did. So I resolved to dispense, 
 in measuring and setting value on the timber, 
 alike with bailiff and merchant. I went 
 through the woods with someone to hold my 
 measuring rod — a lath of eighteen or twenty 
 feet long, used to ascertain the height of the 
 main trunk when it is above reach — and the 
 little sliding-rule which gives the cubic con- 
 tents of the tree from the measure of the cir- 
 cumference ; marked the trees, put the num- 
 bers and sizes in my note-book, set my own 
 price upon them, and found that I had never 
 any difficulty in getting it. 
 
 Not only did I thus sell the timber at my 
 
34 TIMBER, [ill. 
 
 own measurement, but I found that, somehow 
 or other, timber-buyers would always give me 
 some 25 per cent, more than they gave to big 
 proprietors in the neighbourhood, who left the 
 transaction wholly in the hands of their reevesi 
 I never had any personal haggling or any 
 other direct communication with buyers. I 
 gave my bailiff my notes of measurement and 
 price, and the merchant took or refused the 
 offer as pleased him best. The price of stand- 
 ing oak, at the time I am writing of, was 
 about 35', 6^. a foot, but I believe that it is 
 less now ; not, probably, through any legiti- 
 mate fall in its value, but through a better 
 understanding — such as now prevails among 
 butchers — between the purchasers of timber. 
 A ripe Sussex oak seldom exceeds in its 
 contents a " load " of fifty cubic feet. By the 
 time it has reached that size, in my part of the 
 county at least, of which the substratum is the 
 " Hastings sandstone," its roots are commonly 
 checked and probably more or less poisoned 
 by the " iron pan," which usually intervenes 
 between the soil and the rock. An intelligent 
 and somewhat practised eye is required to 
 decide upon the fitness of an oak for felling. 
 A tree with only ten feet of timber in it may 
 
III.] TIMBER. 
 
 00 
 
 have quite done growing, while another of 
 five times the contents may be putting on a 
 great bulk of wood every season. 
 
 A " ripe " tree has always a " stodgy " 
 appearance, especially about the topmost 
 branches, among which small leafless twigs 
 will begin to show themselves. If the work 
 of selecting trees for felling be left to subor- 
 dinates, the biggest, not the ripest, trees will 
 generally be chosen. But this involves very 
 serious loss ; for the larger a tree is the more 
 wood it will put on every year, if it is still 
 " growing ; " and, since an oak is usually not 
 timber at all until it is twenty-five or thirty 
 years old, every additional year's growth, up 
 to fifty to sixty years of its age, ought to be 
 reckoned as containing two years of its entire 
 increase. 
 
 Another point requiring the eye of the 
 master is the thinning of trees when they 
 stand too close together for free growth. I 
 found this a serious problem sometimes. 
 There were belts of Scotch firs, spruce, and 
 larch extending for about half a mile on either 
 side of the high road. They had been planted 
 about fifty years before I came into possession, 
 and had never been properly thinned, They 
 
36 TIMBER. [ill. 
 
 had therefore run up to a great height ; but 
 three out of four of them were fit only for 
 scaffold-poles. The stronger trees would 
 have still grown into good bulk had it been 
 safe to thin them ; but I found it best to leave 
 them alone, for I had quite ruined a two-acre 
 plantation of similar trees by the attempt. 
 The mass of tall thin trees was able to resist 
 the south-westerly storms only so long as it 
 stood against them altogether. As soon as I 
 had removed a few of the trees from one 
 corner, the wind got in among the rest ; and 
 the whole plantation had to be felled, much to 
 the disfigurement of that part of the estate and 
 of the view from the house. 
 
 There are comparatively very few well-tim- 
 bered woods in Sussex. They are commonly 
 either grievously under-timbered or as griev- 
 ously over-timbered. One healthy tree, fifty 
 or sixtyyears old, standing with a clear space of 
 twenty-five feet about it, will probably be worth 
 ten times as much as ten trees growing to- 
 gether upon an equal area. When a public 
 road runs through an estate, it is a consider- 
 able point of economy as well as beauty that 
 belts of timber should run alongside of it. 
 The trees throw their roots to the centre of 
 
III.J TIMBER. 37 
 
 the road, and utilize the ground as effectually as 
 if it formed part of the estate. A mile of 
 road means probably five acres of land, and 
 these may be considered as being practically 
 added to the property by timber so planted. 
 I acted upon this consideration in my planting 
 operations. A stream, like a road, may be 
 made very productive in timber. The white 
 poplar sells at a high price, and grows at 
 a wonderful rate in good soil and near a 
 stream in a sheltered position. I sold one, 
 only thirty -five years old, for £io; but I did 
 not plant any, because they spoil the look of 
 the adjacent timber, soon overtopping and 
 dwarfing all other trees with their great sparse- 
 leaved grey heads. 
 
 Grubbing timber is a matter of considerable 
 importance in the management of a heavily 
 wooded estate — especially at this time, when 
 everything tends to render the retention of 
 woods immediately unprofitable, and we see 
 grubbing operations going on everywhere on 
 a large scale. The process will not impro- 
 bably, and at no distant period, end in practi- 
 cally denuding England of its woods, and in 
 changing its climate very much for the worse ; 
 as has already happened in large tracts of 
 
38 TIMBERj [lll< 
 
 Spain and other countries, — tracts which have 
 been converted into deserts by the loss of the 
 moisture - absorbing and moisture - supplying 
 power of forests. 
 
 This fatal wood-destroying process received 
 a strong impulse from the strange and most 
 ignorant legislation in the matter of woodlands 
 some dozen years ago. I remember well the 
 character of the debate, though I do not 
 remember the year of it. It ended in rating 
 woodlands — which, for good reasons, had not 
 been rated before — at the agricultural value 
 of the circumjacent land which was under 
 culture. Had a single sensible woodreeve 
 been among the members, he could have 
 turned the debate. He could have told the 
 House that many thousands of acres of wood- 
 lands do not pay one penny to the proprietors, 
 being in such low condition that they do not 
 return the expense of hedging and ditching. 
 " Why," the inveterate Cockney would have 
 asked, " not put them in better condition ? " 
 Because it involves a large outlay, for which 
 not a farthing can be expected to come back 
 for at least twenty-five years, at the end of 
 which no one knows what will have become 
 of the land. " Why," responds the Land Re- 
 
III.] TIMBER. 39 
 
 former, "not grub your unprofitable woods 
 and put them under the plough ? " Because, 
 answers the woodman, to do so would cost, in 
 many cases, the fee-simple of the land, of 
 which in many parts of Sussex the agricultural 
 value is not ;^io; and, furthermore, because 
 a large proportion of woodlands is upon 
 hill-sides and rough ravines, old quarries or 
 gullies, or other uneven places, where nothing 
 else would grow. 
 
 But there was no woodreeve in the House 
 of Commons, and so the English woods were 
 voted to destruction. 
 
BUILDING AND QUARRYING. 
 
Chapter IV. 
 
 BUILDING AND QUARRYING. 
 
 HAVE said that there was a good- 
 sized house upon my estate. It 
 had been originally a very old 
 farmhouse, and a previous pro- 
 prietor had made ill-built additions and a 
 vulgar stucco front. This annoyed me so 
 much that I determined to give the front a 
 new stone facing ; and I consulted a friendly 
 architect about the expense, including two 
 wings with five new rooms. He estimated 
 the cost of this at seven hundred and fifty 
 pounds. It really cost about three thousand, 
 and would have cost a great deal more had I 
 not had the luck to discover a quarry of ex- 
 
44 BUILDING AND QUARRYING. [iV, 
 
 ceedingly fine stone in the very farmyard 
 that adjoined the building. 
 
 Very soon after the work had gone too far 
 to be stopped, I discovered to what I had 
 unwittingly committed myself; the new front 
 necessarily involving a new roof, and the new 
 roof necessarily involving new walls right 
 through the middle of the house in order to 
 support it. As soon, too, as the new building 
 had risen a few feet above ground, I saw that 
 the present surroundings of the house must 
 be swept away, and the farm-buildings and 
 stabling removed to a distance and out of 
 sight, and gardens and terraces made, at a cost 
 of nearly two thousand pounds more, unless 
 my previous expense upon the house was to 
 result in a ridiculous incongruity and an un- 
 saleable condition of the estate. My ready- 
 money resources having been narrowed by 
 the purchase of the land, I resolved to reduce 
 this new expense, as far as possible, by su- 
 perintending the details of the work myself. 
 Having made some study, as an amateur, of 
 architecture and building, and having dis- 
 covered in other ways the importance of 
 knowing the cost prices of materials and 
 work, I resolved to have no master-builder 
 
IV.] BUILDING AND QUARRYING. 45 
 
 but myself; and, by the help of a clever 
 mason, who acted under me and the architect 
 as foreman, I carried this resolve to the end, 
 saving thereby a very large proportion of what 
 would otherwise have been the outlay, and 
 getting the work much better done ; so that, 
 in the end, when I got a great nobleman's 
 land agent from the other end of the county 
 to come and value what I had done, he almost 
 refused to believe that the work had been 
 executed for the cost, and set the valuation 
 at a much higher figure. 
 
 It had been calculated that the walls of the 
 old stabling — a large two-storied building — 
 would go far to supply the stone for the walls 
 of the house ; and that the larger stones for 
 muUions, cornices, and other worked masonry, 
 alone would have to be got out of a quarry 
 some miles off. But it soon appeared that 
 the stones of the stables, when they had been 
 reworked at the edges, would go but a little 
 way, and that the expenses of carrying the 
 large stones five or six miles through the 
 roughest of Sussex lanes would alone add 
 hundreds of pounds to the cost of the building. 
 
 The house itself stood upon a rock, and 
 the farmyard close by was entirely paved 
 
46 BUILDING AND QUARRYING. [iV. 
 
 with the smooth living rock ; but all experts, 
 quarrymen and others, assured me that stone 
 fit for fine mason-work was never found near 
 the surface, and that it was a thousand to one 
 if there were any such stone under the surface 
 in any given spot. Having always, however, 
 been suspicious of experts, I resolved to try. 
 The experiment would not cost above £10, 
 and if it succeeded it might save me a thou- 
 sand. 
 
 Accordingly I had two square shafts, each 
 about four feet deep, and large enough to 
 admit a man sitting with his stone-saw, sunk 
 in the solid rock, leaving between them a 
 clear block of about three or four feet wide 
 and six apart. The stone-sawyer, sitting in 
 one hole with room for the end of his saw in 
 the other, sawed down the sides of the great 
 mass between the shafts ; the block was then 
 loosened by wedges from its bed, and brought 
 up to the top with much difficulty and labour, 
 by the insertion of wedge upon wedge, and 
 wooden block upon wooden block, each in- 
 sertion raising the stone perhaps half an inch 
 at a time. 
 
 After about a fortnight's work the great 
 block stood clear out. Its bare sides, almost 
 
IV.J BUILDING AND QUARRYING. 47 
 
 polished by the saw, did not show a single 
 flaw or "bed;" the experts pronounced it 
 the finest stone that had been seen in that 
 part of Sussex ; and that they did not ex- 
 aggerate much was afterwards proved by the 
 fact that, as long as my quarry was open, the 
 stone was bought, at almost any price I chose 
 to name, by the builders of mansions and 
 church and school restorers for many miles 
 round. 
 
 After the first two shafts had been sunk 
 the difficulty and expense of quarrying di- 
 minished rapidly; each additional pair of 
 shafts enabling the sawyer to cut out six or 
 eight times as much as lay between the ori- 
 ginal pair. The stone was perfectly fine and 
 even in texture and colour, very hard, and in 
 such large masses — one weighed sixteen tons 
 — that I had it used not only for the long 
 and heavy moulded work of the exterior, but 
 for large Tudor carved chimney-pieces, for 
 which Caen stone was to have been employed. 
 
 WTien my house, terraces, etc., were finished, 
 and I filled up the quarry, the masons and 
 quarrymen talked as if I were closing a gold- 
 mine ; but there was no help for it, for the 
 yawning gulf lay just under the walls of the 
 
48 BUILDING AND QUARRYING. [iV. 
 
 building. I thought, indeed, that I might 
 find this bed of treasure extending to some 
 distance, and accordingly opened the rock at 
 one or two other places not very far from the 
 house ; but the stone found in these spots was 
 like all the rest for miles round, giving plenty 
 of "walling stuff" — i.e., blocks of a cubic foot 
 or so in size — but nothing large enough for 
 " di-essed work." 
 
 Before closing the quarry, I thought it well 
 to get out a large number of blocks, each 
 containing about thirty cubic feet, for future 
 contingencies ; and I found them of the 
 greatest use in another addition which I 
 made to the house about eight years after- 
 wards. 
 
 I saved money in many ways, by not only 
 closely superintending, but sometimes taking 
 part in the work. For example, when the 
 workmen were pulling down the stabling, I 
 observed that they not only lost an immense 
 deal of time by lifting each stone from its bed 
 with chisel and hammer, but that by this 
 process they broke the edges of the stones to 
 such an extent that the " re-bedding " of them 
 reduced them sometimes to half their size. 
 I expostulated ; but they answered that, if 
 
IV.] BUILDIXG AND QUARRYING. 49 
 
 the walls were thrown down by levers, as I 
 proposed, much more stone would be wasted 
 by breakage. Therefore one day, as soon as 
 the men had gone to dinner, I took a crowbar 
 and pulled down more wall in an hour than 
 each man was levelling in a day ; and though 
 here and there a stone was fractured, the loss 
 was far less than had been caused by the 
 chisel. There was no replying to the fact; 
 and the rest of the work was done as I wished 
 it to be. 
 
 I saved also a great deal bj' measuring the 
 work which was done daily by each mason, 
 and directinsf the foreman at the end of each 
 week to pay off every man who had not done 
 his duty. I had for a considerable time more 
 than fifty men at work, building and quarry- 
 ing; but I found I never made myself un- 
 popular by interference where I was right. 
 The only disfavour I earned was by one or 
 two attempts at personal kindness, which my 
 foreman warned me would not be understood, 
 but certainly attributed to some underhand 
 motive. 
 
 The men — the best of them were from 
 London — ^were for the most part very honest 
 and honourable from their point of view, but 
 
 E 
 
50 BUILDING AND QUARRYING. [iV. 
 
 from mine sometimes very unintelligible. For 
 example, one of the London masons had 
 brought down his wife, who was in a con- 
 sumption, for thie good of the air. She died 
 in one of my cottages ; the man went about 
 his work next day with tears in his eyes, and 
 was further distressed by having no money 
 in hand to bury her. I told the foreman to 
 offer him the loan of £$, to be repaid at his 
 convenience. He accepted it ; but never said 
 a word of thanks either to me or through the 
 foreman. But, some time after his job was 
 finished and he had left for I know not where, 
 I received back the money. 
 
 The London workmen, who received 8s. a 
 day, seemed to have a certain standard of 
 their own as to the quantity of work which 
 should be turned out by each hand; and I 
 found that one or two country masons and 
 "wallers," who received half that sum, and 
 when alone did twice the work, seemed 
 under some tacit compulsion not to do more 
 than their fellows did, so long as they worked 
 with them ; so that plain walling, which had 
 cost me about i8s. a "square" of loo feet 
 before the London men came, cost about £^ 
 a square during their stay, though it fell again 
 
IV.] BUILDING AND QUARRYING. 5 1 
 
 to the lower rate as soon as the country work- 
 men laboured by themselves. 
 
 The difference in the cost of " dressed " 
 work was still greater. My country mason 
 cut out of the block, worked, and " set " a 
 chamfered stone coping to many hundreds of 
 feet of terrace- wall at the rate of y^d. a foot 
 "run." The London masons did about fifty 
 feet of precisely the same work, and it came 
 to 2s. 6d. a foot, or exactly four times as much. 
 A good deal of the plainer dressed work of 
 the house might have been done by this man ; 
 but the London men, on account of some rule 
 or other of their union, would not let him 
 work with them except as a " waller." The 
 London men, however, were indispensable 
 for the more difficult sort of moulded stone- 
 work ; so they were obliged to have all the 
 mason's work proper. 
 
 I am almost afraid to give further examples 
 of the difference between regular builders' 
 prices and the cost of jobs I got done by my 
 country mason, whom I kept almost constantly 
 employed for some years, and who was quite 
 happy, when he worked by himself with one 
 or two subordinates, if he could make out 
 wages of 4J. a day. He did the removing 
 
52 BUILDING AND QUARRYING. [iV, 
 
 and rebuilding of the farm-buildings, at a dis- 
 tance of about a quarter of a mile from the 
 house ; and he built, after my design, a bailiff's 
 cottage. I showed this to an architect who 
 was visiting me some time after, and asked 
 him what he thought it had cost me. "Well," 
 he said, "you did it cheaply if it cost so 
 much," naming a sum rather more than three 
 times what I had spent upon it. 
 
 The prices that well-to-do people pay for 
 all sorts of house-work may often be called 
 " fancy." I was once asked ^80 for a space 
 of plain surface-painting which I found, on 
 measuring it up, to be worth ;^30. The man 
 reduced his estimate at once to ^S'^> on finding 
 that I knew a little about the matter. 
 
 A great deal of expense in estate-work may 
 be saved by little departures from the recog- 
 nized methods of doing things. Thus, I set 
 one of my men to paint about a mile and a 
 half of wire and iron fence with gas tar, which 
 is about one-twentieth the price of ordinary 
 paint, and looks and preserves the iron just 
 as well. He began the job with a brush, 
 with which I slippose he would have taken 
 three weeks or a month to do it ; but I gave 
 him a pair of leather gloves, a piece of stable- 
 
IV.] BUILDING AND QUARRYING. 53 
 
 sponge, and a slop-basin, and made him walk 
 beside the wires or bars, drawing them through 
 the sponge thoroughly soaked in gas tar, and 
 holding the basin underneath as he went. In 
 this way the work was done at the rate of 
 something like half a mile of five-wired fence 
 a day. 
 
 Another device, by which I saved, I should 
 say, at least ;^30o, was that of "puddling" 
 the dams of my series of fish-ponds by horses 
 instead of men. I found that one heavy horse 
 would do the work of ten or twelve men, and 
 would do it a great deal better ; the weight of 
 his hoof being vastly more powerful than the 
 stroke of the usual puddling-rod. 
 
MAKING GROUNDS. 
 
Chapter V. 
 MAKING GROUNDS. 
 
 HEN I had finished my house I 
 was very well satisfied with it, 
 though the alterations had involved 
 about five times greater an expen- 
 diture — reckoning the value of the stone from 
 my quarry — than I had at first intended. It 
 was a fine block of building, of eighty feet 
 frontage and sixty feet depth, and the exceed-' 
 ingly plain and solid Tudor of the new front 
 — the main walls were three feet thick — har- 
 monized very well with the many-roofed re- 
 mainder of the old building at the back. 
 
 As soon as I had seen what the house was 
 to be, I had set about making gardens and 
 
58 MAKING GROUNDS. [v. 
 
 arranging the ground about it to correspond ; 
 and this task occupied me delightfully and 
 profitably in every way for the next eight 
 years. 
 
 The character of the ground fortunately 
 indicated very clearly the plan on which it 
 should be laid out. The house looked south- 
 east, the land rising gently behind and falling 
 in front, till it rose again about half a mile off 
 in a low hill, which cut off the sight of all that 
 lay between my own land and the South 
 Downs. The ground also fell on the left 
 hand of the house down to a wooded glen, 
 and rose again in a well-timbered hill, the 
 crest of which formed the boundary in that 
 direction of my land, which again rose gently 
 on the right of the house, to where, about a 
 quarter of a mile off, the high road ran 
 through belts of my own wood. 
 
 Thus I had what is commonly considered 
 a great advantage in a country-house — a fine 
 and spacious home-view, in which nothing 
 could be seen but my own property, and a 
 noble distance of as sweet and gracious a line 
 of hills as my eyes have ever beheld, in Eng- 
 land or out of it. 
 
 In order to develop the advantage of the 
 
v.] MAKING GROUNDS. 59 
 
 ground, and before I could get a glimpse of 
 the Downs, I had, however, to cut down and 
 " grub " three belts of wood or " shaws " by 
 which the meadows in front of the house were 
 divided. When I had done this, leaving the 
 best trees here and there for ornament, the 
 house found itself standing in the midst of a 
 beautiful little park of about sixty acres, 
 abounding in fine well-grouped trees, and 
 only interrupted in its clear sweeps of grass 
 by the oak avenue to the house and the little 
 oak wood, which, as I have said, skirted the 
 approach on one side. I had to sow ten 
 acres of arable land with grass in order to 
 obtain this stretch of green. That is to say, 
 I had to throw away ten acres of land for at 
 least ten years ; for, unless the ground is very 
 rich, which in Sussex it rarely is, there is no 
 chance of a " sward " under that time ; though, 
 of course, the eye has the required green from 
 the first season. 
 
 On the right of the front of the house, and 
 just where the trees of this avenue ceased, 
 and beyond where the old stables had stood, 
 was the large depression in the ground which 
 I had from the first determined to turn into a 
 sheet of water. It lay some twenty feet 
 
j50 MAKING GROUNDS; [v. 
 
 below the fish-pond in the avenue wood, and, 
 except in very dry weather, there was a con- 
 tinual slight stream passing through it, and 
 thence, through a series of smaller depressions, 
 into the glen about eighty feet below and on 
 the left hand of the house. 
 
 The beginning of the first large depression 
 was about 400 feet from the house, and con- 
 siderably below its level. This hollow covered 
 about two acres, and was about half surrounded 
 by steep banks of oak-wood and underwood, 
 on the right. I had all the underwood grubbed, 
 left all the good trees, turfed the ground 
 under them, and planted single pines, cedars, 
 etc., where there were spaces on these banks ; 
 and then began the work of making the first 
 great pond. It would require, I found, the 
 removal of about 10,000 yards of earth in 
 order to give the pond an average depth of 
 between five and six feet. Had I put this 
 job into the hands of a landscape-gardener 
 and his contractor, it would have cost me 
 9,bout .^500 ; but by doing it leisurely, using 
 the labour of the men on the farm whenever 
 they were not otherwise employed, and making 
 the most economical arrangements for utilizing 
 every yard of earth for islands, the neighbour^ 
 
v.] MAKING GROUNDS. 6 1 
 
 ing terraces, and the filling-up of the quarry, 
 and by constantly overseeing the operations 
 myself, the work was done for less than half 
 that sum. 
 
 This pond was a great success. I took 
 care, in forming its outline, and in felling or 
 leaving the timber between it and the house, 
 to render nearly, but never quite, the whole 
 of this sheet of water visible from any point 
 of view ; so that its size, though great, looked 
 as if it was much greater. 
 
 I solved the problem of how to make the 
 banks of the islands able to resist the action 
 of the water when driven by the wind, by 
 making them up of alternate layers of earth 
 and of the hundreds of young alder-trees 
 which had grown on the site of the pond. 
 The greater part of the mass of earth removed 
 went to make a large horizontal terrace of the 
 ground which had before sloped rapidly from 
 the house; and from this terrace the pond 
 was approached by a broad and solid double 
 flight of water-stairs. As soon as the water 
 was let in, it all looked as old as the avenue 
 itself; for it was more than half surrounded, 
 down to the water's edge, by timber of the 
 same age. 
 
62 MAKING GROUNDS. [v. 
 
 I built a boat-house of heavy trunks and 
 thick thatch in a little creek ; and, in order to 
 please the trout, with which I meant to stock 
 the pond, I brought the water of the old pond 
 on the other side of the avenue, which was 
 about twenty feet above the level of the new 
 one, through a pipe, and had a fine jet ten or 
 twelve feet high playing, whenever I liked, in 
 a large basin cut off from the rest of the large 
 pond by a foot-path. The trout liked the 
 sound of this fountain so much in the droughty 
 weather, in which alone it was played, that 
 they would sometimes try to leap from the 
 pond into the basin across the six-feet-broad 
 path, upon which I sometimes found them 
 skipping and jumping in the hope of falling 
 in again on the right side. 
 
 From the end of the pond furthest from 
 the house the land fell, as I have said, in a 
 sort of small "ghyll" parallel to the house, 
 down to the ravine on the left, between the 
 wooded hill and the little park. Across this 
 hollow, as soon as my big pond was finished, 
 I set about throwing dams, so as to make 
 four new ponds. I planted out the dams 
 from the house-view, so that in four or five 
 years the whole chain of five ponds looked 
 
v.] MAKING GROUNDS. 63 
 
 from our windows just like a stretch of broad 
 winding river ; though in reality there was a 
 difference of about sixty feet between the 
 lower and the upper water. 
 
 As I had no end of great stone blocks from 
 my quarry, I joined these several ponds by 
 falls, which when they were in full play, in 
 wet weather, made quite an imposing display, 
 viewed from the hill-side towards which they 
 fell ; for, thus seen, they looked like a single 
 fall, with picturesque breaks ; and I really 
 think that there are not above one or two 
 falls in all the " Lake country " that could 
 beat my artificial one when the water came 
 down at the rate of a hundred thousand 
 gallons an hour, as it did after rain, or when- 
 ever I chose to " play " it by lifting the pen- 
 stock of the upper pond, which, as it con- 
 tained more than three million gallons, allowed 
 of my showing off my " grandes eaux " for an 
 hour or so, on festive occasions, without any 
 material diminution of its contents. 
 
 I completed my line of fish-ponds by dam- 
 ming the trout-stream which ran through the 
 ravine into which the other ponds emptied 
 themselves. This last pond was entirely sur- 
 rounded by wood and at a distance of about 
 
64 MAKING GROUNDS, [v. 
 
 half a mile from the house, from which it 
 could not be seen. The whole quantity of 
 water in the seven ponds was about six acres. 
 The work, after the great pond was made, 
 was comparatively simple, and, as I had all 
 the puddling (which when done by men is 
 very costly) done by horses, inexpensive ; no 
 ground having to be moved, except clay 
 enough taken from the side of each new pond 
 to make the dam between it and the next. 
 
 I ran invisible wire fences all round the 
 space containing these ponds, and continued 
 the fence so as to include the ground on 
 which the house stood, and about seven acres 
 more, which I laid out in garden, archery- 
 ground and tennis-lawn, orchard, and shrub- 
 beries. The formation of these pleasure- 
 grounds was a long and a rather expensive 
 process. I have paid Messrs. Wood, of 
 Maresfield, £i8o for ornamental shrubs in 
 one year. 
 
 It took many hundreds of loads of peat 
 from the adjoining " forest " to make the 
 soil suitable for several large banks of rhodo- 
 dendrons ; and the deep trenching and en- 
 closing of about an acre for kitchen-garden 
 was a serious item of expense. Had I been 
 
v.] MAKING GROUNDS. 65 
 
 in a hurry about this work it would have cost 
 far more ; but nearly all the work, except the 
 digging of the great pond, was done in the 
 course of time by a gardener, with two per- 
 manent helps and occasional assistance from 
 the home farm. 
 
 I completed the ornamental part of my 
 work by making about five miles of paths 
 through the shrubberies and woods. This 
 was a slow but not a costly business, involv- 
 ing little more than cartage ; for I had endless 
 material in my stone-pits and the vast mass 
 of sand and stone-chips which the masons and 
 wallers left in the course of their work on the 
 house, the terrace-walls, etc. 
 
 Nothing adds more effectively and less ex- 
 pensively to the dignity of a country place 
 than abundant breadth of road and path. I 
 was once staying at such a place, where the 
 house had cost £ 1 20,000 ; and on asking the 
 proprietor why his^approach to the house had 
 been made by him only thirteen feet wide, 
 instead of thirty, he told me it had been 
 done to save land. The road was a mile 
 long ; so that the difference would have been 
 rather more than an acre and a half, of which 
 the value was at most £<fi. Had I had the 
 
66 MAKING GROUNDS. [v. 
 
 making of the place, I would have spent 
 ^5,000, had it been necessary, rather than 
 tolerated the perpetually obtrusive meanness 
 of such an approach to such a mansion. My 
 narrowest garden and wood paths allowed of 
 three persons walking side by side comfort- 
 ably. Fortunately the old approach was twenty- 
 six feet wide ; that is, wide enough but not at 
 all too wide for the character of the hoiise. 
 
 I applied to the formation of my lawns a 
 principle which I drew from Mr. Penrose's 
 valuable book, published by the Dilettante 
 Society, in which he announces his discovery 
 that there are no such things as truly hori- 
 zontal lines in the greatest works of Greek 
 architecture : the base lines, for instance, of 
 the Parthenon rising towards the middle an 
 inch or so in 100 ft, I had always discerned 
 that there was something amiss about a quad- 
 rangular space of perfectly flat turf; and I 
 found that this effect was wholly obviated by 
 a rise towards the centre, so small that it 
 could be felt rather than seen. I mentioned 
 my application of this principle to a very well 
 known architect, who at once acknowledged 
 and adopted it in making the grounds of his 
 own house. 
 
v.] MAKING GROUNDS. 67 
 
 I did not keep the place long enough to 
 make it perfect by new stabling, but kept the 
 old farm-stables which were behind the house 
 and were good enough for my own use ; but 
 before I gave up my proprietorship I settled 
 the site of the stables, and greatly improved 
 the look and size of the mansion by adding 
 to the north-west corner of it a massive gate- 
 house, containing five new servants' rooms. 
 
 The entire work cost me, as I have stated, 
 about ;^5,500, besides the produce of the 
 stone-quarry, which cost me nothing but the 
 working. And on comparing these results 
 with the accounts of country gentlemen, friends 
 of mine, who have done similar work by the 
 wits of others instead of their own, I do not 
 hesitate to say that ;^ 10,000 would not have 
 covered the cost had it been done by con- 
 tractors and landscape-gardeners. 
 
FARMING AND SHOOTING. 
 
Chapter VI. 
 FARMING AND SHOOTING. 
 
 Y home-farm was about loo acres, 
 which is a good size for a single- 
 team farm. A farm of much less 
 than this extent does not give 
 enough work for a team (which in a hilly 
 county like Sussex means three horses) ; and 
 if it is much larger it ought to be about 200 
 acres, in order to maintain two teams; and 
 so on. 
 
 When I came into possession I found a 
 very intelligent bailiff on the spot: he had 
 managed the farm for several years, and 
 I engaged him to remain. I saw at once that 
 my power of detailed control over this part of 
 
72 FARMING AND SHOOTING. [vi. 
 
 my property • must be comparatively small. 
 The actual work of farming requires a life's 
 experience, and an experience gained more or 
 less in one locality. 
 
 All the gentlemen of my acquaintance who 
 had home-farms had regarded them as expen- 
 sive luxuries rather than as sources of income ; 
 and they were evidently more or less at the 
 mercy of their bailiffs, upon whose accounts 
 there could be no effectual check. They 
 were all, also, addicted to " high farming," 
 which, as far as I could understand, meant 
 spending money without much regard to 
 returns. I could not afford this ; nor, indeed, 
 should I have found any satisfaction in such 
 farming had I been ever so rich. The 
 capital which can profitably be put into a 
 farm depends mainly on the character of the 
 soil ; and, from all I could learn from real 
 farmers in the neighbourhood, ;^8 to ;^io an 
 acre was as much as my land would pay 
 interest upon after paying rent. 
 
 A prosperous farmer in the immediate 
 neighbourhood had offered me ;^i50 a year 
 for my home-farm. I communicated this 
 offer to my bailiff; and told him that as long 
 as my farm returned this rent and ;^5o a year 
 
VI.] FARMING AND SHOOTING. 73 
 
 interest for capital I should farm it under his 
 direction, but that if it failed to do that I 
 should accept my neighbour for its tenant. 
 
 This arrangement was quite satisfactory to 
 my bailiff; who, after returning me my stipu- 
 lated minimum of rent and interest for about 
 nine years, bought the goodwill of a " public." 
 Before that I had had more than one indica- 
 tion of his flourishing condition. One year, 
 after the sale of the wheat, I sent him with 
 the money, ;^ioo, to the bankers' in the next 
 town. On giving me the banking receipt, 
 I observed that it was for £7^, and pointed 
 the fact out to him. " Oh," said he, " it's a 
 mistake. That's for some money I put in 
 myself. Here is the receipt for yours." 
 
 Although I did not know enough to take 
 the principal part in the management of my 
 farm, I became gradually sufficiently instructed 
 to have a considerable hand in it ; and com- 
 mon sense and a slight acquaintance with 
 chemistry enabled me to make suggestions 
 that were found useful. 
 
 For example, I pointed out how ruinous 
 was the general practice of " spreading " farm- 
 yard manure, and still more of sowing guano, 
 without regard to the weather — in a dry east 
 
74 FATIMING AND SHOOTING. [vl. 
 
 wind, perhaps ; the greater part of the value 
 of such rrianures consisting in volatile am- 
 monia, which requires moisture to confine it 
 and to carry it into the earth instead of the 
 air. If manure were never spread except 
 when the glass is rapidly falling, and guano 
 never sown but when it is actually raining or 
 between showers, the result would be a very 
 sensible increase in profits. 
 
 In order to improve the " heart " of the soil, 
 which had not been well used by my prede- 
 cessor, I kept, for so small a farm, a large 
 number of cattle, and " stall-fed " some of 
 them with purchased food, which could be 
 done then without loss ; for in those days 
 butchers gave about twopence a pound more 
 for meat than they do now, when they put the 
 twopence on to their customer which they 
 take off from the farmers. 
 
 I am not much of a politician ; but it has 
 often occurred to me that, if the paternal 
 government under which we now live would 
 pass a measure to the effect that the super- 
 fluous profits of butchers should be confiscated 
 as some other less questionable rights have 
 lately been, the national debt might be extin- 
 guished with the proceeds in one generation. 
 
VI.] FARMING AND SHOOTING. 75 
 
 A considerable proportion of my sheep and 
 cattle were bought by the butcher who sup- 
 plied the house with meat. He gave me (^d. 
 or <^^d. for the carcass ora sheep, and I paid 
 him the same price for legs, shoulders, and 
 loins; the " offal," or " fifth quarter," consisting 
 of head, skin, etc. — worth 8^. or gs, a sheep — 
 having been, up to that date, about fifteen 
 years ago, considered a butcher's fair profit. 
 My butter, which was made in the house by a 
 servant who had been a Yorkshire dairymaid, 
 fetched 2,d. a pound more than the butter of 
 any other farm in the neighbourhood. My 
 bailiff never had to send anything from the 
 farm to a distant market ; purchasers always 
 coming to him to buy. This was in many 
 respects a convenience ; but once it put my 
 wife into a position of some difficulty. She 
 inadvertently complained to the butcher of 
 some beef he had supplied, and received in 
 reply the unanswerable remark, " 'Twas your 
 own beast, ma'am." 
 
 Of all my undertakings, the least profitable 
 I found to be pheasant-raising. Yet I was in 
 a way bound in honour to breed them, as 
 numbers of them came on to my grounds 
 from the adjacent woods of a gentleman who 
 
76 FARMING AND SHOOTING. [vi. 
 
 bred and preserved them; and I could not, 
 with a comfortable conscience, indulge in the 
 inevitable temptation to shoot them unless I 
 had some of my own to stray in my neigh- 
 bour's way. The gamekeepers of other 
 estates supplied me with eggs from 365. to 
 48^. a dozen ; but by the time I had bagged 
 the birds out of them they had cost me at 
 least j^2 each. 
 
 The place was not big enough to keep 
 a trained gamekeeper, and I lost more from 
 early deaths and perils from vermin, etc., 
 than from poachers. One day a peacock 
 killed a whole brood of young pheasants ; 
 thirty or forty died at another time because 
 the man whose business it was to rear them 
 was laid up for a few days and some slight 
 error was made in their food. 
 
 One of my servants, at whose mistakes 
 I was obliged to wink because he was on the 
 whole too valuable to be parted with, used to 
 be in doubt about the species of these birds, 
 and this cost me many of them. It was re- 
 ported to me that his little girl, seeing some 
 of them in the larder, exclaimed " Oh, the 
 pretty pigeons ! " and, on being told that they 
 were not pigeons, she replied that she was 
 
VI.] FARMING AND SHOOTING. 77 
 
 quite sure they were, because her father had 
 told her they were pigeons. On comparing 
 notes, however, with one of my neighbours, an 
 old squire with a large estate, who was be- 
 lieved to spend a thousand a year on his pre- 
 serves, I was much comforted by finding that 
 his pheasants cost him, before they came to 
 the gun, nearly as much as mine did. 
 
 Here I may notice a curious psychological 
 phenomenon connected with the possession of 
 land with its privileges. I am naturally, like 
 Sir Thomas Browne, of an exceedingly mild 
 disposition ; and, like him, do not sincerely 
 hate any person or thing except the People, 
 and them only in the aggregate that spells 
 itself with a great P ; nevertheless any in- 
 jurious trespass on my bounds, especially 
 when it related to game, inflamed me with 
 passions of which I had supposed myself in- 
 capable. 
 
 A neighbour who had some land on one of 
 my borders, and who did not breed pheasants, 
 would sometimes be unable to withdraw his 
 dogs from my woods while he was skirting 
 them with his gun. This excited, and to this 
 day excites in me feelings of the most dire 
 description. 
 
78 FARMING AND SHOOTING. [vi. 
 
 Again, there were six brothers, huge fellows 
 and notorious night poachers, and leading 
 members of the local Poachers' Club, which 
 paid the fines of its subscribers. The game- 
 keepers in the neighbourhood were supposed 
 to be shy of these men — all six of whom, by 
 the by, worked at once for me in digging the 
 great pond. Once or twice on moonlight 
 nights I heard shots in the wood nearest my 
 house ; and as the man who looked after my 
 game did not like going alone, I set out with 
 him with a brace of heavy double-barrelled 
 pistols, too much enraged to feel any fear ; 
 though in my cooler moments I do not think 
 I am unduly insensitive to danger. In my 
 own exculpation I may say that I have seen 
 similar signs of the survival of the instincts of 
 the hunting savage in some of the most 
 thoroughbred gentlemen of my acquaintance. 
 
 The extent of my ground and the quantity 
 of game upon it abundantly satisfied my 
 sporting requirements. I could never see the 
 fun of battue shooting ; but a walk with my 
 dog of two or three hours in a tract of the 
 most lovely country in England, enlivened by 
 an occasional shot and crowned with a bag of 
 a brace or two of birds and two or three 
 
VI.] FARMING AND SHOOTING, 79 
 
 rabbits, was a real pleasure, and I did not 
 envy my neighbour whose preserves cost him 
 a thousand a year. 
 
 The prime duty of goiarding one's game 
 gave rise to several pathetic incidents. The 
 execution of favourite cats — who always took, 
 after a year or two, to poaching — was a sad 
 necessity ; but it was generally concealed 
 from the household. My groom had a little 
 pet dog, who also took to running too far 
 afield. I told him he must get rid of it, and 
 he acceded with perfect good-humour. The 
 next day I observed a row of miniature joints 
 of meat hanging up in the stable. The man 
 had killed and cut up his pet for food for the 
 ferrets, which were kept in a box for the 
 destruction of rabbits. 
 
 Another distressing choice I had to make 
 between duty and inclination occurred when 
 my fish-ponds, having become thickly stocked, 
 were found out by the herons, which abounded 
 in the Sussex marshes about sixteen miles off. 
 They gorged and carried off in their pouches 
 such quantities of my trout and other fish that 
 I had to elect between these and them, and I 
 resolved to sacrifice the picturesque to the 
 useful. I tried in vain to get within shot of 
 
8o FARMING AND SHOOTING. [vi. 
 
 them, so I set rat-traps in a sandy shallow, 
 which was patterned all over by their foot- 
 prints. I thus caught four and scared away 
 the others. In two cases, the capture having 
 been made with only a slight injury to their 
 toes, I kept the birds in my aviary, and gave 
 them as much of the coarser fish as could be 
 consumed on the premises. They took quite 
 easily to their captivity, and would stand for 
 days together each on one leg, digesting fish 
 often pretty nearly as big as their own bodies. 
 
FISH-PONDS AND AVIARIES. 
 
Chapter VII. 
 FISH-PONDS AND AVIARIES. 
 
 HEN the digging of my great pond 
 was finished, and the water of the 
 old upper pond was turned into it 
 through the " penstock," it was a 
 great delight to see what had been hitherto 
 an unsightly hollow converted at once into a 
 beautiful sheet of water, which, from the 
 indentations and irregularities of its shores and 
 the impossibility of seeing it from any point 
 all at one time, looked very much larger than 
 it really was. 
 
 This little lake seemed at once as old as the 
 oaks which adorned its variously elevated 
 banks down to the water's edge. Th^e 
 
84 FISH-PONDS AND AVIARIES. [vil. 
 
 quantity of water which already passed 
 through it from the other ponds and down 
 through the site of the chain of lower ponds 
 was amply enough to keep it fresh and clear. 
 But, for the benefit of the fish to come, I 
 turned the surface drainage of about sixty 
 acres of land, which had hitherto run off by 
 other channels, into this course, and thus 
 obtained such a supply that one day's 
 hard rain would fill the entire lake to the 
 brim after it had been emptied through its 
 penstock into the lower ponds. 
 
 The next step was to put in the fish. There 
 was a small but very deep pond on another 
 part of the estate, in which I found eight or 
 ten large carp, each from six to twelve pounds 
 in weight. These I put into the great pond, 
 so that I might not have to wait two or 
 three years for the pleasure of seeing the 
 backs of big fish gliding near the surface, or 
 resting under the water-lilies, on hot summer 
 days. I next dammed the trout-stream on 
 the other side of the turnpike road, and took 
 out in one day 700 trout of from one to eight 
 ounces in weight, by far the greater number 
 being of the smaller figure. 
 
 I lost nearly all these fish by not being at 
 
VII.] FISH-PONDS AND AVIARIES. 85 
 
 that time aware that air is more necessary 
 than water for trout. In bringing them from 
 the Stream, which was nearly a mile from the 
 pond, I used a large garden water-cart nearly 
 filled with water. A year or two afterwards 
 I brought over a large number of trout from 
 the same stream, in the same vessel, without 
 losing one of them, by taking the precaution 
 to give them only just enough water to cover 
 them ; the shallow fluid being kept well 
 aerated by being dashed continually from side 
 to side in the jolting of the cart on the road. 
 
 A neighbouring farmer, who knew I wanted 
 to stock my ponds, one day brought me more 
 than a hundredweight of large tench, many 
 weighing from one and a half to two pounds. 
 These also I put into my great pond ; but 
 soon found that they spoilt the water by in- 
 cessantly ploughing up the bottom and banks 
 with their noses, like so many pigs. I there- 
 fore emptied the pond and took out the tench 
 and the carp, which I suspected of eating my 
 small fish, and put the tench into the pond out 
 of which I had taken the carp, and the carp 
 into the upper pond in the avenue wood ; re- 
 stocking the great pond entirely with very 
 small fish — trout, bream, roach, chub, and 
 
86 FISH-PONDS AND AVIARIES, [vil. 
 
 carp. They would all have gone into a quart 
 pot ; and three years afterwards, when I again 
 emptied the pond,- 1 took out between three 
 and four hundredweight — all from this small 
 beginning. This prodigious growth was 
 mainly owing to the ground being new, and 
 thus affording a far greater amount of food 
 than an old pond of corresponding size would 
 have supplied. 
 
 I found I had made a great mistake in 
 putting in bream, through my simplicity in 
 reading an old French proverb — " He who 
 has bream in his pond never wants a welcome 
 for his friends " — in its literal rather than its 
 sarcastic meaning ; the bream being, indeed, 
 almost the only one among the ordinary fresh- 
 water fish of which no skill in cooking can 
 disguise the coarseness. We had at one time 
 a clever Italian cook, and it was wonderful 
 what good dishes he made of tench or roach ; 
 but the bream, even under his hands, never 
 lost its reminiscence of mud. 
 
 The trout, though they would not breed in 
 my big pond notwithstanding the sandy and 
 pebbly shallows I had prepared for their use, 
 grew at a much greater rate than they would 
 have done in their native stream. After two 
 
VII.] FISH-PONDS AND AVIARIES. 87 
 
 years I had the pleasure of hooking trout 
 of three-quarters of a pound, which proved 
 very good eating ; and it was beautiful to see 
 them, as we could from the house, shooting at 
 least six feet out of the water, which they did 
 especially in droughty weather, when they 
 appeared to be impatient of the comparatively 
 small supply of fresh water. 
 
 I distributed the immense haul made at the 
 first fishing of the great pond among the series 
 of smaller ponds, which were thus thickly 
 stocked at once ; and to these I added the 
 contents of one or two other ponds, which 
 neighbouring proprietors had allowed me to 
 empty. In fact, these ponds were thus over- 
 stocked. My boys could hook forty pounds 
 in a morning. I therefore got a lot of small 
 jack, of about half a pound, and put a few of 
 them in each of the lesser ponds. 
 
 It is a proverb that big fish will only grow 
 in a big pond ; and it is true of most fish, but 
 not of pike. I put five half-pound fish into 
 the deep little outlying pool, into which I 
 have said I had placed the tench. Two years 
 afterwards there was a great drought and 
 a fiercely hot summer ; so that the water of 
 this pool, which had been an old marl-pit, be- 
 
88 FISH-PONDS AND AVIARIES. [VII. 
 
 came so unwholesome that one day they were 
 all found lying dead on the surface. They 
 weighed from seven to twelve pounds each, 
 and still the pool remained thickly stocked 
 with tench. 
 
 The pike throve in a no less satisfactory 
 manner in the other ponds, and were much 
 better sport to catch, and much better food to 
 eat, than the bream and Prussian carp upon 
 which they chiefly fed. Nothing comes amiss 
 to a pike, and quantity is as little regarded by 
 him as quality. I once found lying in a semi- 
 torpid state at the edge of the water what 
 seemed to be a big fish with two tails. It 
 was a pike in the act of gorging a bream that 
 was actually broader than himself. Frogs are 
 his chief delight ; but among these he some- 
 times finds his match. One day I saw a 
 shapeless mass rolling itself about in the 
 water, and, on drawing it to shore with a long 
 hop-pole, I found it to be a jack of about three 
 pounds with a frog perched firmly on the 
 back of its head. The frog had scratched 
 out the fish's eyes, and had stuck its elbows 
 so strongly into the head of its prey that I had 
 almost to break its legs in order to get it off. 
 Isaac Walton says he had heard of such a 
 
VII.J FISH-PONDS AND AVIARIES. 89 
 
 thing, but seemed scarcely to believe it. I 
 saw it. 
 
 My fish had plenty to eat besides each 
 other ; and here, by the way, I should say 
 that it is quite a mistake to suppose that pike 
 alone will eat their own kind. I believe that 
 all fish will eat their offspring while they are 
 small and tender; trout and several other 
 kinds certainly will. Boiled " graves," mixed 
 with clay and rolled into balls, was what I 
 chiefly fed my fish on. But a dead sheep, or 
 any meat-offal, is welcome, and will help most 
 pond-fish to fatten. 
 
 Pike prefer live things. They would rather 
 have a silver spoon or a piece of coloured rag 
 that looks lively than a dinner of the best 
 dead meat. They are very fond of live birds. 
 My ducklings were often sucked in by them, 
 as were the young of the coots which used to 
 breed by my ponds ; and a swan has been 
 known to put her head down the throat of a 
 pike, never to come out again alive. It is 
 necessary to take care how you handle them, 
 for they will bite at your hand like a dog 
 when they are being carried to the larder; 
 and their bite is far worse than a dog's. In 
 floods some of my fish would get over the 
 
go FISH-PONDS AND AVIARIES. [Vll. 
 
 dams, into the trout-stream beyond, and 
 thence into a little river that runs into the 
 sea. I fancy that I have recognized some of 
 my big bream — which could scarcely have 
 been grown in the stream — more than twenty 
 miles from my fish-ponds. 
 
 An otter, who had his abode in the neigh- 
 bouring " ghyll," once or twice visited the 
 ponds and left curious signs of his extravagant 
 meal. One morning I found about twenty 
 pounds weight of large fish dead on the bank, 
 nothing of them having been eaten but a little 
 piece out of each shoulder. 
 
 Between the back of the range of the old 
 farm-stabling, behind the houses and a very 
 high stone wall which I built as a screen to 
 keep these stables out of sight from the gar- 
 dens, I made a great aviary by simply giving 
 the whole space a roof of wire netting. I 
 planted this enclosure with evergreens and' 
 divided it into three compartments with com- 
 municating doors, and filled it with birds of 
 all kinds and sizes, chiefly such as belonged to 
 the country — herons, pheasants, hawks, owls, 
 ravens, rooks, hooded and common crows, 
 jackdaws, and several others. 
 
 At first there was a good deal of fighting ; 
 
VII.] FISH-PONDS AND AVIARIES. 9 1 
 
 but I gradually found which of the birds 
 would live best together, and kept them in 
 separate divisions. Birds, however, would 
 sometimes begin to fight after having lived 
 together for months on amicable terms — made 
 irritable, I suppose, like people on long 
 voyages, by want of room for their feelings. 
 The hawks never interfered with the doves 
 and other birds, their natural prey. I suppose 
 that they had not space enough to swoop 
 upon them with effect ; and the owls, a pair of 
 the smallest sort, never did any murder, ex- 
 cept once when they were found in deadly 
 battle with a huge rat, which they succeeded 
 in killing. 
 
 On account of the almost natural freedom 
 enjoyed by the birds in their large enclosure, 
 they displayed many curious habits and idio- 
 syncrasies which would have enchanted a 
 naturalist. Indeed, I should have to write a 
 new " Natural History of Selborne " if I were 
 to note all the interesting and, as far as I 
 know, hitherto unnoted facts about birds, 
 beasts, and fishes, which I observed during 
 my life in Sussex. Among the most amusing 
 of these was the good and orderly understand- 
 ing which seemed at once to establish itself 
 
92 FISH-PONDS AND AVIARIES. [vil. 
 
 among the various members of the crow tribe, 
 who were all kept together. For example, 
 the first time a hooded crow was introduced 
 into the cage, it seemed to be acknowledged 
 that he had precedence of the rook at the 
 dinner-table ; the latter actually offering a 
 piece of raw meat I had given him to the 
 former before he thought of helping himself. 
 
 Curious platonic relations were established 
 between birds of the most different character. 
 A silver pheasant devoted himself, for in- 
 stance, in the most absurdly chivalrous manner, 
 to the protection of a solitary jackdaw who 
 had built her nest and laid vain eggs in a hole 
 under the eaves of the old stabling. 
 
 The only serious tragedy which occurred 
 among the birds was the death of a heron, who 
 was the pride of the aviary. A peacock, who 
 was spoiling the high grass of the meadows by 
 dragging his heavy tail all about it, was sen- 
 tenced to confinement till the hay should be 
 cut. He no sooner saw the heron than he 
 sprang over his head and pierced his skull 
 with a single stroke of his spur. 
 
 The place was now " made." My shrub- 
 beries and plantations had grown wonderfully, 
 owing chiefly to the deep trenching of the 
 
VII.] FISH-PONDS AND AVIARIES. 93 
 
 earth in which I had planted them. Some of 
 them at the end of fifteen years were nearly 
 thirty feet high, and everything looked a hun- 
 dred years old ; even the house having a really 
 ancient appearance, on account of a plainness 
 and massiveness almost unknown in modern 
 house architecture. 
 
 If the walls of a house are three feet thick 
 it is sure to look well, however unlearned the 
 architecture ; but I had had the good fortune 
 to get the services of an architect who, what- 
 ever had been his mistakes about expense, 
 knew his business as an artist as well as any 
 man in England ; and he and I had always 
 been at one about the prime necessity of very 
 thick walls, not only for comfort but effect. 
 
 It is surprising that this point is so little 
 understood in country-house building. In a 
 ^10,000 house the difference of expense be- 
 tween walls of two and three feet in thickness 
 is a mere trifle — three or four hundred pounds ; 
 but the difference in effect is quite incalculable. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
Chapter VIII. 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 HIS last chapter of my country ex- 
 periences I devote to an account of 
 various, at the time, unconsidered 
 trifles, which would not come under 
 any of the foregoing headings, and which, 
 indeed, have but a very accidental connection 
 with my main subject. 
 
 The house, being between four and five 
 hundred feet above the sea-level and having 
 a very wide horizon, was quite an observatory 
 for meteorological phenomena, some of which 
 —whirlwinds and waterspouts among the rest 
 — seemed to have a special liking for our 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 H 
 
98 CONCLUSION. [vm. 
 
 There was one hailstorm quite unHke any- 
 thing I have ever before or since seen or 
 heard of. The afternoon was fine and quiet, 
 when I saw a dense grey veil, apparently a 
 furlong or so in breadth, approaching the house 
 from the south. It was about a mile off when 
 I first noticed it, as I knew by its obscuring 
 in its course certain objects which lay at that 
 distance. Sunshine was on either side of it. 
 In a few minutes it reached the house. There 
 was one clap of thunder, whether at the time 
 of its arrival or a little while before I do not 
 recollect. For somewhat less than two minutes 
 the hail came down, with a sudden but not 
 very violent blast of wind, in such quantities 
 that nothing could be seen thirty yards from 
 our windows. In those two minutes my rain- 
 gauge measured nearly one inch and a quarter 
 — that is to say, about as much as falls in 
 an ordinary heavy downpour of twenty-four 
 hours' duration. 
 
 The forms of the hailstones and their way 
 of falling were not less remarkable than their 
 quantity. About half of them were ordinary 
 hailstones as to spherical shape and construc- 
 tion in concentric layers, only they were about 
 the size of common marbles ; the other moiety 
 
VIII.j CONCLUSION. 99 
 
 were clear discs of ice of about the diameter 
 of a penny piece and twice as thick, perfectly 
 well-formed, and in numberless cases having 
 small projections on one or both sides, which 
 made them look like the covers of small stew- 
 pans with their handles. Here and there 
 there was a mass of clear ice of a different 
 form. The largest I picked up was about 
 the size of a bantam's egg, hollow and formed 
 with spiral ridges. I did not weigh any of 
 these hailstones ; but a neighbour told me 
 that he had picked up eight which weighed 
 an average of two ounces each. I do not think 
 that I saw any of more than half that weight. 
 But what surprised me more than their 
 size was their way of coming down. In my 
 eagerness to examine the stones, I hastened 
 out of the window from which I was looking 
 without my hat on. I felt the blows of the 
 ice-balls almost as little as if they had been 
 snow-flakes ; no glass was broken, no trees or 
 shrubs injured ; and a friend who was driving 
 two high-spirited horses through the thickest 
 of it, told me that they took no notice of it 
 whatever, though he should have been sorry 
 to have been driving them through an ordinary 
 hailstorm. 
 
100 CONCLUSION. [VIII. 
 
 The only way I can see of accounting for 
 this extraordinary fact is the supposition that 
 these masses of ice were formed and sustained 
 in a funnel of wind, of which the extreme 
 point or nose did not reach the earth, although 
 it passed close above it ; so that when the 
 weight of the stones overcame the sustaining 
 force of the hurricane they had only a hundred 
 or two of feet to fall through. I leave it to 
 scientific men to guess, if they can, why half 
 the hailstones took the form of the covers of 
 stew-pans. 
 
 A scarcely less unusual freak of the wind 
 happened once, about one or two o'clock in 
 the morning, when I was lying awake and 
 listening — if the expression may be allowed 
 — to the wonderful stillness of the night in 
 that sparsely populated country. Without the 
 slightest warning or stir in the plantations near, 
 the house was softly and mightily struck, as by 
 an india-rubber ball of the size of a small 
 planet. Though the walls were three feet 
 thick, they rocked with the blow ; and com- 
 plete stillness instantaneously succeeded. The 
 next morning the bailiff told me that many 
 trees in the wood nearest the house had been 
 struck and split by lightning; and, on going 
 
VIII.] CONCLUSION. 10 1 
 
 to see, I found a part of the wood strewn with 
 great arms and branches, which had no doubt 
 been brought low by the sweep of that soH- 
 tary blast. 
 
 Having always been addicted to lonely 
 night-wa.lks in the country, I have seen many 
 more things in the sky than are dreamed of 
 by such as never stir out after dinner. The 
 aurora borealis is a far commoner thing, even 
 in the south of England, than is supposed ; 
 and I have seen it scores of times for every 
 once that it has been reported by newspaper- 
 writing sky-gazers. 
 
 I have twice seen the ghostly quivering 
 splendour arching the south instead of the 
 north. One of these occasions was in the 
 year of the siege of Paris. About eleven 
 o'clock the show began in the north with a 
 fine eruption of blue and red shafts, radiating 
 from a low arch of darkness. In about half 
 an hour the entire sky — north, south, east, 
 and west — became one huge tent of quivering 
 crimson flame, with the exception of a little 
 black circlet right overhead, from which the 
 light all flowed, like a veil from a diadem. 
 The lustre was so great that everything in 
 the near landscape could be clearly seen, and 
 
I02 CONCLUSION. [VIII. 
 
 the chain of ponds looked just like great pools 
 of blood. Before midnight the redness had 
 left the north, but it remained for some time 
 unfaded in the southern sky. Everybody on 
 the place was up and watching it. 
 
 Towards the conclusion of the spectacle, I 
 was standing near where my bailiff and gar- 
 dener were talking about it. One said to 
 the other, " They're getting it under now." 
 " Getting what under ? " I asked. " Paris, sir, 
 as the Germans have been a burning." 
 
 Some time after the large terrace with its 
 enclosed lawn was formed, it was found im- 
 possible to keep the turf in anything like 
 order, on account of the immense number of 
 worm-casts thrown up from the new earth, 
 which was several feet deep. After trying 
 various expedients in vain, I hit by mere acci- 
 dent upon a very effectual one. I noticed that 
 a spot, on which some coarse creosote had been 
 spilt the day before, was entirely covered with 
 dead worms, which had apparently sought the 
 ait in order to avoid the penetrating odour. 
 I therefore had a large square of old sheeting 
 moistened with creosote, and left it spread all 
 night on a corner of the lawn. In the morn- 
 ing it was lifted, and there appeared no grass, 
 
VIII.] CONCLUSION. 103 
 
 but what looked like an immense slice of raw 
 meat. The unsightly mass was shovelled 
 up and thrown to the fish ; and the turf below, 
 though slightly bleached, was not injured, but 
 recovered its colour in a day or two. The 
 process being repeated wherever it was re^ 
 quired, the earth was thoroughly purged from 
 worms, which never again made their appear- 
 ance in inconvenient numbers. 
 
 When describing the digging of my big 
 pond I omitted to mention a circumstance 
 which may be interesting to geologists and 
 mineralogists. I observed that a barrow of a 
 kind of loose shale which had been thrown 
 into the quarry, in the course of filling it up 
 from the pond, contained quantities of small 
 light-coloured garnets. I sp»oke of this to the 
 man who was superintending the work, and 
 he told me that he had buried many loads of 
 them in the same hole. 
 
 In or near the same spot, and In the same 
 kind of earth, I found a little seam of coal. 
 It was about half an inch in breadth. I men- 
 tioned these facts to a friend who professed 
 some knowledge of geology and mineralogy 
 (which I do not), and he seemed to think them 
 very anomalous and unaccountable for by the 
 
104 CONCLUSION. [VIII. 
 
 geological character of the locality. There, 
 however, are the facts. 
 
 I was more than once witness to a danger- 
 ous peculiarity in the manners of weasels, 
 with which all strollers in woods and out-of- 
 the-way walks should be acquainted. They 
 will not get out of your way, and consider it 
 a deadly affront if you do not get out of theirs. 
 One day I saw three of them playing in the 
 middle of the path I had to go over. I fortu- 
 nately knew of their custom of running up an 
 intruder instead of away from him, and of the 
 sure instinct which guides them to the largest 
 blood-vessels of all who offend them. I 
 therefore stood still within two or three yards 
 of them. They looked at me and went on 
 playing. 
 
 I had with me an old retriever very learned 
 in all knowledge befitting his station. I called 
 him and showed the weasels to him. With 
 an apparent sense of the gravity of the situa- 
 tion he approached them carefully ; they, as 
 usual, disdained to fly. But the dog was too 
 quick to allow of their pursuing their ordinary 
 bloodthirsty tactics ; for, making a sudden 
 pounce upon them, they were all dead before 
 they had time to think of his jugular. Their 
 
VIII.] CONCLUSION. 105 
 
 wickedness is perfectly inhuman. It is not 
 so much that they love to feast on blood as 
 to rejoice in its flux ; and their insensibility to 
 danger exceeds courage and culminates in 
 stupidity. 
 
 The only creature I know of which equals 
 the weasel in its contempt of all that inter- 
 feres with the satisfaction of its ferocious 
 passions is the water-devil — I do not know 
 its scientific name. He is a little fiendish- 
 looking thing, about as big as a shrimp ; with 
 two horns projecting from the side of his head 
 and meeting in front, constituting a pair of 
 powerful circular pliers, with which he seizes 
 his prey and holds it while sucking its juices. 
 
 Once, as I was skirting the large pond in 
 my boat, I saw one of these creatures at the 
 brink, with a new-born jack rather bigger 
 than himself in his grip, I took him up by 
 the tail, and made him drop his prey into the 
 bottom of the boat. But his mind was not in 
 the least disturbed by the thought of what had 
 got hold of his tail, but only of the little 
 wounded fish which had been forced from his 
 clutches. Over and over again I held him 
 near the little fish ; and each time he eagerly 
 grasped and held it till it was again forced from 
 
I06 CONCLUSION. [VIII. 
 
 him. I finally rewarded him for his devilry 
 by abandoning him to "himself and the satis- 
 faction of his bad passions. 
 
 As weasels and water-devils represent the 
 extreme of wickedness in nature, so doves and 
 dormice exhibit her sweetest innocence. I 
 have sat near a nest of dormice in a wood, 
 and the parents have come and eaten straw- 
 berries out of my hand without any show of 
 fear. 
 
 I was once praising my especial pets to a 
 French Catholic lady, and related to her an 
 impromptu apologue of how, when Adam and 
 Eve were eating the apple, the dormouse said 
 to himself, " I should like a bite of that ! " and, 
 in order to avoid temptation, covered his eyes 
 with his tail. I had no idea my story would 
 be taken au sdrieux ; but a week or two after- 
 wards a long article on the subject, by the 
 lady's friend, Louis Veuillot, appeared in the 
 Univers, entitled "A Pious English Catholic 
 Tradition." 
 
 Before my ponds had been made more 
 than two or three years, very large fresh- 
 water mussels appeared here and there on 
 their brinks. They seemed to exercise some 
 occult mode of fascination upon the little fish. 
 
"vni.] CONCLUSION. 107 
 
 I have often watched small roach gradually 
 approaching the half-open shells, and enter 
 them as of free will, only sideways, not to 
 appear again. 
 
 I must close my notes of natural phenomena 
 with one or two anecdotes of my own species. 
 
 The first applicant I had, after having made 
 it known that I wanted to part with m)- estate, 
 was a wealthy City man. He made many 
 knowing inquiries of me, with an air of being 
 quite up to country matters. The last was, 
 "Aw — aw — how many haystacks does the 
 farm produce ? " I replied that it depended 
 somewhat on their size. He seemed dis- 
 satisfied that there should be any such con- 
 tingency in the matter, and declined to 
 purchase. 
 
 The next inquirer was a man who owned 
 an estate in Australia somewhat larger than 
 Sussex. He looked at two or three of the 
 principal rooms of the house, the gardens, and 
 the fish-ponds ; seemed immensely delighted ; 
 said he would write to me next day ; and was 
 driving off, when he jumped up in his carriage 
 and said he need not wait, but would write an 
 agreement to purchase at once, and at my 
 own price — which was two thousand pounds 
 
Io8 CONCLUSION. [VIII, 
 
 more than I afterwards asked and got for it ; 
 for I did not sell until the depreciation in 
 landed property had begun to set in. 
 
 Having myself suffered, in former days, 
 from acts done in such fits of enthusiasm, I 
 told him I would not sell to him until he had 
 slept on it and looked a little more into par- 
 ticulars. Next day he had thought better of 
 it, and only proposed to take a long lease. 
 
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 trations by W. L. JONES, and Design on the Cover by Miss Pym. 
 2nd Edition. 5J. 
 ' A very good book it is, full of adventure graphically told. The style is just 
 what it should be, simple, but not bold, full of pleasant humour, and with some 
 pretty touches of feeling. Like all Mrs. Ewing's tales, it is sound, sensible, and 
 wholesome. ' — Times. 
 
 SIX TO SIXTEEN : A Story for Girls. With 10 Illustrations 
 by Mrs. Allingham. 5th Edition, ^s. 
 ' It is a beautifully told story, full of humour and pathos, and bright sketches 
 of scenery and character. It is all told with great naturalness, and will amuse 
 grown-up people quite as much as children. Inreading the story, we have been 
 struck especially by characteristic bits of description, which show very happily 
 the writer's appreciation of child life.' — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 * We have rarely met, on such a modest scale,_ with characters so ably and 
 simply drawn. . . . The merits of the volume, in themselves not small, are 
 much enhanced by some clever illustrations from the pencil of Mrs. Allingham.' — 
 Atheneentn. 
 
 * The tone of the book is pleasant and healthy, and sin^larly free from that 
 sentimental, not to say "mawkish," stain which is apt to disfigure such produc- 
 tions. The illustrations by Mrs. Allingham add a special attraction to the little- 
 volume.' — Times. 
 
 ' It is scarcely necessary to say that Mrs. Ewing's book is one of the best of 
 the year.' — Saturday Review. 
 
 A FLAT IRON FOR A FARTHING; or, Some Passages in 
 the Life of an Only Son. With 12 Illustrations by H. Allingham, 
 and Design on the Cover by Miss Pym. 13th Edition. 5j. 
 
 * Let every parent and guardian who wishes to be amused, and at the samff 
 time to please a child, purchase " A Flat Iron for a Farthing; or, some Passages 
 in the Life of an Only S m," by J. H. Ewing. We will answer for the delight 
 with which they will read it themselves, and we do not doubt that the young and 
 fortunate recipients will also like it. The story is quaint, original, and altogether 
 delightful.' — A themsttm. 
 
 •A capital book for a present. No child who is fortunate enough to possess 
 it will be in a hurry to put it down, for it is a book of uncommon fascination. 
 The story is good, the principles inculcated admirable, and some of the illustra- 
 tions simply delicious.' — John Bull. 
 
 JAN OF THE WINDMILL; a Story of the Plains. With 
 II Illustrations by Helen Allingham. and Edition, s-i- 
 
 ' It is a long time since we have read anything in its way so good. . . . Such 
 a book is like a day in June— as sweet and as wholesome as anything can be . . . 
 Good as Miss Alcott's breezy stories are, even they are but juvende beside such 
 writing as this.' — American Church Union. 
 
 ' "Jan of the Windmill " is a delightful story for children and other people. 
 . . . The atmosphere of country life—" the very air about the door ijiade dusty 
 with the floating meal "—breathes freshly in the book, and the rural scenes are 
 not unworthy of George Sand, if George Sand wrote for [es ^elites Jilles. 'The 
 growth of the hero's artistic power is as interesting as the lives of old painters. 
 
 Academy, 
 
20 George Bell and Sons' 
 
 By Mrs, Ewing — Continued. 
 
 MRS. OVERTHEWAY'S REMEMBRANCES. Illustrated 
 with lo fine Full-page Engravings on Wood, after Drawings by 
 Pasquier and Wolf, and Design on the Cover by Miss Pym. 3rd 
 Edition. 
 ' It is not often nowadays the privilege of a critic to grow enthusiastic over a 
 new work ; and the rarity of the occasion that calls forth the delight is apt to 
 lead one into the sin of hyperbole. And yet we think we shall not be accused of 
 extravagance when we say that, without exception, " Mrs. Overtheway's Re- 
 membrances " is the most delightful work avowedly written for children that we 
 have ever read. There are -passages in this book which the genius of George 
 
 Eliot would be proud to own It is full of a peculiar, heart-stirring pathos 
 
 of its own, which culminates in the last pages, when Ida finds that her father is 
 not dead. The book is one that may be recurred to often, and always with the 
 same delight. We predict for it a great popularity.'- — Leader. 
 
 A GREAT EMERGENCY, and other Tales. With 4 Illustra- 
 tions, and Design on the Cover by Miss Pym. 5J. 
 * Never has Mrs. Ewing published a more charming volume of stories, and 
 that is saying a very great deal. From the first to the last the book overflows 
 with the strange knowledee of child-nature which so rarely survives childhood ; 
 and, moreover, with inexhaustible quiet humour, which is never anything but 
 innocent and well-bred, never priggish, an4 never clumsy.' — Academy. 
 
 THE BROWNIES, and other Tales. Illustrated by George 
 
 Cruikshank, 3rd Edition. Imp, i6mo. 5^. 
 
 Mrs. Ewing gives us some really charming writing. While her first story 
 most prettily teaches children how much they can do to help their parents, the 
 immediate result will be, we fear, anything but good. For if a child once begins 
 ** The Brownies," it will get so deeply interested in it, that when bed-time comes 
 it will altogether forget the moral, and will weary its parents with importunities 
 for just afew minutes more to see how everything ends. The frontispiece, by 
 the old friend of our childhood, George Cruikshank, is no less pretty than the 
 story,' — Satttrday Review. 
 
 LOB-LIE-BY-THE-FIRE ; or, the Luck of Lingborough. And 
 other Tales. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. 2nd Edition. 
 Imp. i6mo. 5J. 
 
 ' A charming tale by another of those clever writers, thanks to whom the 
 children are now really better served than their neighbours.'— i/ifc^uior. 
 
 ; Mrs. Ewing has written as good a story as her " Brownies," and that is 
 saying a great deal. " Lob-lie-by-the-fire " has humour and pathos, and teaches 
 what IS right without making children think they are reading a sermon.'— 
 Saturday Review, 
 
 MELCHIOR'S DREAM, and other Tales. Illustrated. 4th 
 Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. dd. 
 
 ' " Melchior's Dream " is an exquisite little story, charming by original 
 humour, buoyant spirits, and tender pathos.' — Atkeiueiim, 
 
Selected Works. 21 
 
 By F. M. Peard, Author of ^Unawares, ^ 'The Rose 
 Garden,' 'Cartouche,' &'c. 
 
 MOTHER MOLLY. A Story for Young People. With 8 
 Illustrations. Small post 8vo. 5J. 
 
 ' The story is to other Christmas books what Mr. Blackmore's stories are to 
 ordinary novels. It is fresh, a little quaint, and is, in fact, a charming ideal of 
 the latter end of the ast century.' — Standard. 
 
 THROUGH ROUGH WATERS. A Story for Young People. 
 With II Illustrations. Small post 8vo. ^s. 
 
 'This is a tale of the French Revolution, well written, in a style suitable for 
 young people : an interesting little story.' — Exa^niner. 
 
 'It IS a book intended for young readers, and they may be thankful to light 
 upon it instead of the sentimental twaddle with which they are so often supplied.' 
 — Acade7?ty. 
 
 PRINCESS ALETHEA: a Story for Young People. With 
 Eight Illustrations by J. D. Watson. Small post 8vo. Sj. 
 ' A pretty story of the t5"pe familiar to the readers of Miss Yonge.' — 
 
 Athe7iau}it. 
 'A pleasant, wholesome, story, full of interest, and certain to attract and 
 benefit the young people for whom it has been written." — Scotsman, 
 
 Uniform with the above. 
 
 HECTOR : a Story for Young People. By Flora Shaw, Author 
 of ' Castle Blair,' &c, With Eight Illustrations by W. J. Hen- 
 nessey. Small post 8vo. 5J. 
 
 Hector, the brave, bright English boy, with his high thoughts, his love of the 
 wild birds, his respect for honest labour, and his chivalrous sympathy with the 
 distressed, is exactly the tjrpc of hero that it is good for children to have before 
 them, and will meet with sympathy and admiration ;_ while the scrapes he falls 
 into so readily will make the children feel that there is no "goodliness " in him to 
 awake their antagonism.' — Academy. 
 
 By Mrs. O'Reilly. 
 
 ' Mrs. O'Reilly's works need no commendation . . . the style is so good, the 
 narrative so engrossing, and the tone so excellent." — yohn Bull. 
 
 DAISY'S COMPANIONS ; or, Scenes from Child Life. A 
 Story for Little Girls. With 8 Illustrations. 3rd Edit. i6mo. 2f. dd. 
 
 ' li anybody wants a pretty little present for a pretty (and good) little 
 daughter, or a niece or grand-daughter, we cannot recommend a better or tastier 
 one than "Daisy's Companions." — Times. 
 
 LITTLE PRESCRIPTION, and other Tales. With 6 Illus- 
 trations by W. H. Petherick and others. i6mo. ar. 6d. 
 ' A worthy successor of some charmin|; little volumes of the same kind. . • . 
 The tale from which the title is taken is for its grace and pathos an especial 
 (&vounte.'—Sfieciatvr. 
 
22 
 
 George Bell and Sons' 
 
 By Mrs. O^Heilly — Continued. 
 
 CICELY'S CHOICE. A Story for Girls. With a Frontispiece 
 by J. A. Pasquier. Fcap. 8vo. gilt edges, y. 6d. 
 
 ' A pleasant story. . . . It is a book for girls, and grown people will also enjoy 
 reading it.' — AthentEutn. 
 
 ' A pleasant, well-written, interesting story, likely to be acceptable to young 
 people who are in their teens.' — Scotsman. 
 
 GILES'S MINORITY; or, Scenes at the Red House. With 
 8 Illustrations. i6mo. as. 6d. 
 • In one of our former reviews we praised " Deborah's Drawer." " Giles's 
 Minority " no less deserves our goodwill. It is a picture of school-room life, and 
 is so well drawn that grown-up readers may delight in it. In literary excellence 
 this little book is above most of its fellows.' — Times. 
 
 DOLL WORLD; or, Play and Earnest. A Study from Real 
 Life. With 8 Illustrations. By C. A. Saltmarsh. i6mo. zs. 6d. 
 'It is a capital child's book, and it has a charm for grown-up people also, as 
 the fairy haze of "long-ago" brightens every page. We are not ashamed to 
 confess to the " thrillmg interest " with which we followed the history of 
 '* Robertina " and " Mabel." ' — Athetueum. 
 
 DEBORAH'S DRAWER. With 9 Illustrations. l6mo. zs. td. 
 
 *Any godmamma who wishes to buy an unusually pretty and artistically- 
 written gift -book for an eight-year-old pet cannot do better than spend a florin or 
 two on the contents of "Aunt Deborah s Drawer." ' — AtkencEum. 
 
 Captain Marry afs Books for Boys. 
 
 Uniform Illustrated Edition, neatly bound in cloth, post 8vo. 
 3^-. 6d. each ; gilt edges, 4J. 6d. 
 
 POOR JACK. With Sixteen Il- 
 lustrations after Designs by 
 Claekson Stanfield, R.A. 
 
 THE MISSION ; or. Scenes in 
 Africa. With Illustrations by 
 John Gilbert. 
 
 THE PIRATE, AND THREE 
 CUTTERS. WithMemoirof the 
 Author, and 20 Steel Engravings 
 by Clarkson Stanfield, R.A. 
 Cheap Edition, without Illus- 
 trations, IS. 6d. 
 
 THE SETTLERS IN CANADA. 
 With Illustrations by Gilbert 
 and Dalziel. 
 
 THE PRIVATEERSMAN. 
 Adventures by Sea and Land 
 in Civil and Savage Life One 
 Hundred Years ago. Illustrated 
 with Eight Steel Engravings. 
 
 MASTERMAN READY ; or, the 
 Wreck of the Pacific. Embel- 
 lished with Ninety-three En- 
 gravings on Wood. 
 
 A BOY'S LOCKER. A Smaller Edition of Captain Marryat's 
 Books for Boys, in 12 vols. Fcap. 8vo. in a compact cloth box, 2i.r. 
 
 MASTERMAN READY. People's Edition, with 93 Illustra- 
 tions, 4to. 6d. 
 
 POOR JACK. People's Edition, 29 Illustrations, 4to. &/. 
 
Selected Wm-ks. 23 
 
 OUR PETS AND PLAYFELLOWS IN AIR, EARTH, 
 AND WATER. By Gertrude Patmore. With 4 Illustrations 
 by Bertha Patmore. Crown 8vo. y. 6d. 
 
 FRIENDS IN FUR AND FEATHERS. By Gwynfryn. 
 
 Illustrated with 8 Full-page Engravings by F. W. Keyi,, &c. 6th 
 
 Edition. Handsomely bound, y. 6d. 
 'We have already chaxacterised some other book as the best cat-and-dog 
 hook of the season. We said so because we had not seen the present little book, 
 which is delightful. It is written on an artistic principle, consisting of actual 
 biographies of certain elephants, squirrels, blackbirds, and what not, who lived in 
 the flesh ; and we only wish that human biographies were always as entertaining 
 and instructive.' — Saturday Reviru,. 
 
 By Hans Christian Andersen. 
 
 FAIRY TALES AND SKETCHES. Translated by C. C. 
 
 Peachey, H. Ward, A. Plesner, &c. With 104 Illustrations by 
 
 Otto Speckter and others. Crown 8vo. 6j. 
 
 'The translation most happily hits the delicate quaintness of Andersen — 
 
 most happily transposes into simple English words the tender precision of the 
 
 famous story-teller ; in a keen examination of the book we scarcely recall a 
 
 single phrase or turn that obviously could have been bettered.' — Daily Telegraph. 
 
 TALES FOR CHILDREN. With 48 Full-page lUustrations by 
 Wehnert, and 57 small Engravings on Wood by W. Thomas. 
 A New Edition. Crown 8vo. dr. 
 This and the above vol. form the most complete English Edition of Andersen s 
 
 Tales. 
 
 WHAT SHALL WE ACT? or, a Hundred Plays from which 
 to Choose. With Hints on Scene Painting, &c By M. E. 
 James. Third Edition, crown 8vo. aj. td. 
 
 FAIRY PLAYS FOR CHjLDREN. ByK.\TE Freiligr.4th- 
 Kroeker. With Illustratfons by M. Sibree. .-Vnd Songs, and 
 Edition, u. each. Alice ; adapted, by permission, from ' Alice's 
 Adventures in Wonderland.' SNOWDROP. THE Bear Prince. 
 Jack and the Princess who never Laughed. The Foiu: Plays 
 in I vol. , cloth gilt, 4J. dd. 
 
 GUESSING STORIES; or. The Surprising Adventures of the 
 Man with the Extra Pair of Eyes. By the late Archdeacon Free- 
 man. 4th Edition, zs. 6d. 
 
 WONDER WORLD. A Collection of Fairy Tales, Old and 
 
 New. Translated from the French, German, and Danish. With 
 
 4 Coloiu-ed Illustrations and numerous Woodcuts by L. Richter, 
 
 Oscar Pletsch, and others. Royal i6mo. cloth, gilt edges, jr. 6d. 
 
 * It will delight the children, and has in it a wealth of wisdom that may be of 
 
 practical service when they have grown into men and women.' — Literary World, 
 
 GRIMM'S GAMMER GRETHEL; or, German Faiiy Tales 
 and Popular Stories. Translated by Edgar Taylor. Numerous 
 Woodcuts after G. Cruikshamk's designs. Post Bvo. %s. dd. 
 
24 Gmrg^ Bell and Sons' Selected Works. 
 
 LOST LEGENDS OF THE NURSERY SONGS. By Mary 
 Senior Clark. With i6 full-page Illustrations. New edition, 3r.6n'. 
 
 LITTLE PLAYS FOR LITTLE PEOPLE ; with Hints for 
 Drawing-room Performances. By Mrs. Chisholm, Author of 
 ' Rana, the Story of a Frog.' i6mo. with Illustrations, zs. 6d. 
 
 ROBINSON CRUSOE. With lOo Illustrations, zi Coloured, 
 by E. H. Wehnert. Crown 8vo. gilt edges, S-f. 
 
 THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD. By E. Wetherell. With lo 
 Illustrations. Post 8vo. 3J. 6d. 
 
 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. By H. B. Stowe. Illustrated. 
 Post 8vo. 3J. 6d. 
 
 KATIE ; or, the Simple Heart. By D. Richmond, Author of 
 'Annie Maitland.' Illustrated by M. J. Booth. and Edition. 
 Crown Byo. 3J. 61/., 
 
 ANECDOTES OF DOGS. By Edward Jesse. With Illus- 
 trations. Post Bvo. cloth, S-i. With 34 Steel Engravings after 
 Cooper, Landseer, &c. js. 6d. 
 
 CHARADES, ENIGMAS, AND RIDDLES. Collected by a 
 Cantab. s*h Edition, enlarged. Illustrated. Fcap. 8vo. u. 
 
 POETRY- BOOK FOR SCHOOLS. Illustrated with 37 
 highly finished Engravings by C. W. Cope, R.A., W. HELMSLEy, 
 S. Palmer, F. Skill, G. Thomas, and H. Weir. Crown Bvo. 
 gilt, zs. 6d, ; plain cloth, is. 
 
 GILES WITHERNE; or, the Reward of Disobedience. A 
 Village Talefor the Young. Bythe Rev. J. P. Parkinson.D.C.L. 
 6th Edition. Illastrated by the Rev. F. W. Mann. Super-royal 
 i6mo. IS. 
 
 THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. By John Bunyan. With 
 281 Engravings from Designs by William Harvey. Post Bvo. 
 3s. 6d. 
 
 NURSERY CAROLS. By the late Rev. Dr. Monsell, Rector 
 of St. Nicholas, Guildford, vrith upwards of 100 Illustrations by 
 LuDWiG Richter and Oscar Pletsch. Imp. i6mo. is. 6d. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 GEORGE BELL & SONS, York Street, Covent Garden. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 5143.A4 
 
 How I managed and improved my estate. 
 
 3 1924 013 533 132 
 
Ig