In This Way The
Creatures Are Being Extirpated, And One Can Foresee That When
Hares And Rabbits Are No More,
And even the small birds of the
plain, larks, pipits, wheatears, stonechats, and whincats,
have vanished, the hunters in khaki
Will take to the chase
of yet smaller creatures - crane-flies and butterflies and
dragon-flies, and even the fantastic, elusive hover-flies
which the hunters of little game will perhaps think the most
entertaining fly of all.
But it would be idle to grieve much at this small incidental
and inevitable result of making use of the plain as a military
camp and training-ground. The old god of war is not yet dead
and rotting on his iron hills; he is on the chalk hills with
us just now, walking on the elastic turf, and one is glad to
mark in his brown skin and sparkling eyes how thoroughly alive
he is.
A little after midnight on the morning of June 21, 1908, a
Shrewton cock began to crow, and that trumpet sound, which I
never hear without a stirring of the blood, on account of old
associations, informed me that the late moon had risen or was
about to rise, linking the midsummer evening and morning
twilights, and I set off to Stonehenge. It was a fine still
night, without a cloud in the pale, dusky blue sky, thinly
sprinkled with stars, and the crescent moon coming up above
the horizon. After the cock ceased crowing a tawny owl began
to hoot, and the long tremulous mellow sound followed me for
some distance from the village, and then there was perfect
silence, broken occasionally by the tinkling bells of a little
company of cyclists speeding past towards "The Stones." I was
in no hurry:
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 239 of 298
Words from 65532 to 65828
of 82198
