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The Make or Break Issues in IT Management
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
 The Make or Break Issues
in IT Management:
A Guide to 21st Century Effectiveness

Edited by

Dan Remenyi and Ann Brown

OXFORD AUCKLAND BOSTON JOHANNESBURG MELBOURNE NEW DELHI

Butterworth-Heinemann
Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP
225 Wildwood Avenue, Woburn, MA 01801-2041

A division of Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd

First edition 2002

© Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd 2002

All rights reserved. No part of this publication

may be reproduced in any material form (including
photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic
means and whether or not transiently or incidentally
to some other use of this publication) without the
written permission of the copyright holder except
in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a
licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd,
90 Tottenham Court Road, London, England W1P 0LP.
Applications for the copyright holder’s written permission
to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed
to the publishers

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 7506 50346

Typeset by Avocet Typeset, Brill, Aylesbury, Bucks

Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents

Computer Weekly Professional Series xi

About the Authors xiii
Preface xxi

1 A word of caution
Exploring fashions in IS/IT management 1
David Avison
ESSEC Business School, Paris, France
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Strategic information systems 2
1.3 Business process re-engineering 5
1.4 Outsourcing 6
1.5 Enterprise resource planning systems 7
1.6 Knowledge management 8
1.7 A strategy to develop IT applications 9
1.8 Success and failure 11
1.9 The role of the consultant 12
1.10 Conclusions 13
References 14

2 Outsourcing IT and e-business 17

Leslie Willcocks
Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, United Kingdom
2.1 Introduction 17
2.2 Overview of developments 18
2.3 Using external IT/e-business services: a complex track record 20
2.4 Sourcing e-business: new rules? 24
2.5 Sourcing internet implementation capability 24
2.6 E-sourcing: from projects and technology to strategic partnering 29
2.7 External sourcing around the customer resource life cycle 29
2.8 The virtual organization – effective management approaches 32
2.9 Towards effective IT and e-sourcing decisions 34
2.10 Conclusions 37
Notes 39

v
Contents

3 Learning to realize the benefits of IT 41

Brent Work
University of Cardiff, United Kingdom
3.1 Some evidence of the missing benefits 41
3.2 IT investment as a religious salvation 43
3.3 IT investment as exploration 46
3.4 Benefits realization as organizational learning 47
3.5 What is a benefits map? 48
3.6 An example of a benefits map 50
3.7 A case study in benefits realization 53
3.8 Learning to learn how to realize IT benefits 54

4 Purchasing and information technology

Buying IT and using IT to buy 56
Frank Bannister
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
4.1 Introduction 56
4.2 Purchasing IT 57
4.3 Using IT to purchase: e-procurement 69
4.4 EDI 70
4.5 Conclusion 75
Reference 76
Bibliography 76

5 Full life cycle management and the IT management paradox 77

Egon Berghout
University of Groningen, The Netherlands
and
Menno Nijland
London School of Economics, United Kingdom
5.1 Introduction 77
5.2 Full life-cycle management 79
5.3 Planning stage 80
5.4 Development stage 81
5.5 Exploitation stage 84
5.6 Full life-cycle management revisited 86
5.7 Full life-cycle management in practice 87
Appendix: Quick scan elements in detail 97
References 105

vi
 Contents

6 A framework for evaluating legacy systems 108

Carole Brooke
Faculty of Business and Management,
University of Lincoln, United Kingdom
6.1 Introduction 108
6.2 Getting started 109
6.3 Second iteration of the scenarios 120
6.4 Conclusions 122
Acknowledgements 123
Refererences 124

7 IT on board or under the thumb? 125

Robina Chatham and Keith Patching
Cranfield School of Management, United Kingdom
7.1 Introduction 125
7.2 The IT revolution – like, when? 126
7.3 Reforming the tribes – back to virtual nature 127
7.4 Anthropology and society 128
7.5 IT people, the shamans of the twenty-first century? 129
7.6 IT people – a different kind of tribe? 130
7.7 The IT stereotype 131
7.8 Organizational politics 133
7.9 Task, process and people 135
7.10 Conclusions 137
References 138

8 Why business models matter

(and how they can make adifference in internet commerce) 139
Stephen Drew
Henley Management College, United Kingdom
8.1 Introduction 139
8.2 Insights from e-retailing 140
8.3 Business models versus value chain 142
8.4 Business model analysis 145
8.5 A business model framework 147
8.6 Value proposition 148
8.7 Revenue generation system 149
8.8 Delivery system 151
8.9 Profit and growth engine 152
8.10 The business model framework in practice 153

vii
Contents

8.11 An example in on-line financial services: Nordea 154

8.12 Summary and conclusions 154
References 156

9 Whither IT?
A look at IT in 2005 157
James McKeen and Heather Smith
School of Business, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
9.1 Introduction 157
9.2 The changing IT function 159
9.3 The IT organization in 2005 161
9.4 Conclusion 173
References 174

10 Strategic decisions in the information age

Transforming technology promises into business benefits 175
Theo Renkema
Eindhoven University and Rabobank Group, The Netherlands
10.1 Introduction 175
10.2 Investment issues and management challenges 176
10.3 Foundations for organizational decision making 178
10.4 The product and process dimension of investment decisions 184
10.5 The ‘P4’ decision-making model 187
10.6 Conclusions 197
Notes 198
References 199

11 E-business model options 203

The first challenge is how to sustain the business
Dan Remenyi
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
11.1 Introduction 204
11.2 Defining the business model 204
11.3 Components of a business model 206
11.4 The term of the business model 210
11.5 High-level and detailed business models 210
11.6 Generic business models 210
11.7 The sustainability issue 225
11.8 Risk and the choice of business model 226
11.9 The next generation of business model 228
11.10 Discussion 229
11.11 Summary and conclusion 230

viii
 Contents

References 232
Notes 233

12 The CIO’s career is over … long live the CIO!! 237

Han van der Zee
Nolan Norton Institute, De Meern, The Netherlands
12.1 How ICT changes the economy and industries 238
12.2 How ICT changes organizations 239
12.3 Why integrate ICT in corporate strategy and management? 240
12.4 How to integrate ICT in corporate strategy and management 241
12.5 Implications for traditional ICT strategy and the role of the
chief information officer 246
12.6 Conclusion 248
References 249

13 Herding cats:
Managing IT in the twenty-first century 250
Terry White
Bentley West Consultants, Johannesburg, South Africa
13.1 Introduction 250
13.2 The times they are a-changin’. But is IT management? 252
13.3 Sailing the IT ship in the twenty-first century 254
13.4 Dealing with complexity 255
13.5 Managing complex adaptive systems 258
13.6 Complex adaptive systems in the real IT world 260
13.7 Managing in the complex environment 263
13.8 The long and winding road 264
References 265

14 Back to the future

A look at information deliveries 267
René Pellissier
Graduate School of Business Leadership, Pretoria,
University of South Africa
14.1 Introduction 267
14.2 The I in IT 268
14.3 Proposed classification of information technologies 270
14.4 Vendors and product applications in the extended matrix 281
14.5 General trends in information delivery 288
14.6 Conclusion 296
References 297

ix
Contents

15 Manipulating reality
Deception on the Web 300
William Hutchinson
Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia
and
Matthew Warren
Deakin University, Victoria, Australia
15.1 Introduction 300
15.2 Principles of deception 301
15.3 Deception on the Web 303
15.4 Beyond the present 306
15.5 How do you identify a lie? 308
15.6 Conclusion 310
References 311

Index 313
Computer Weekly Professional Series
There are few professions which require as much continuous updating as that
of the IS executive. Not only does the hardware and software scene change
relentlessly, but also ideas about the actual management of the IS function are
being continuously modified, updated and changed. Thus keeping abreast of
what is going on is really a major task.
The Butterworth-Heinemann–Computer Weekly Professional Series has been
created to assist IS executives to keep up to date with the management ideas
and issues of which they need to be aware.
One of the key objectives of the series is to reduce the time it takes for leading
edge management ideas to move from the academic and consulting environ-
ments into the hands of the IT practitioner. Thus this series employs appropri-
ate technology to speed up the publishing process. Where appropriate some
books are supported by CD-ROM or by additional information or templates
located on the Web.
This series provides IT professionals with an opportunity to build up a book-
case of easily accessible, but detailed information on the important issues that
they need to be aware of to successfully perform their jobs as they move into
the new millennium.
Aspiring or already established authors are invited to get in touch with me
directly if they would like to be published in this series.

Series Editor
dan.remenyi@mcil.co.uk

Series Editor
Dan Remenyi, Visiting Professor, Trinity College Dublin

Advisory Board
Frank Bannister, Trinity College, Dublin
Ross Bentley, Management Editor, Computer Weekly
Egon Berghout, Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands
Ann Brown, City University Business School, London

xi
Computer Weekly Professional Series

Roger Clark, The Australian National University

Reet Cronk, Harding University, Arkansas, USA
Arthur Money, Henley Management College, UK
Sue Nugus, MCIL, UK
René Pellissier, School of Business Leadership, South Africa
David Taylor, CERTUS, UK
Terry White, BentleyWest, Johannesburg

Other titles in the Series

IT investment – making a business case
The effective measurement and management of IT costs and benefits
Stop IT project failures through risk management
Understanding the Internet
Prince 2: a practical handbook
Considering computer contracting?
David Taylor’s Inside Track
A hacker’s guide to project management
Corporate politics for IT managers: how to get streetwise
Subnet design for efficient networks
Information warfare: corporate attack and defence in a digital world
Delivering IT and e-business value
Reinventing the IT department
The project manager’s toolkit

xii
About the Authors

David Avison
David Avison is Professor of Information Systems at ESSEC
Business School, near Paris, France, following nine years as
Professor of Information Systems at Southampton University.
He is also Visiting Professor at Brunel University, UK, and
University Technology, Sydney, Australia. He is joint founder
and editor with Guy Fitzgerald of the Information Systems Journal
and also joint editor with Guy of the McGraw-Hillseries of texts
on information systems. So far, 17 books are to his credit (plus
one translation from French) as well as a large number of papers
in learned journals, edited texts and conference papers. He is
Chair of the International Federation of Information Processing
(IFIP) 8.2 group on the impact of IS/IT on organizations and
was past President of the UK Academy for Information Systems.
He has chaired a number of international conferences. He is an
active consultant as well as researcher in information systems.
He has most recently been involved in IS/IT strategy formula-
tion at a major intra-European manufacturing company.

Frank Bannister
Frank Bannister PhD is a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems
in Trinity College, Dublin, where he is also Director of Studies of
the Management Science and Information Systems programme.
Prior to joining Trinity in 1995, he worked in Operations Research
in the Irish Civil Service and for 16 years with Price Waterhouse,
Management Consultants. He is a Consulting Associate with
PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He has written numerous articles and
papers on Information Systems and Technology in IT
Purchasing and Finance published by GEE. He is the Executive
Editor of IT Policies and Procedures in Ireland.

Egon Berghout
Egon Berghout is Professor of Information Management at the

xiii
About the authors

University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Principal Assoc-

iate at M&I/Partners. He is specialized in improving the effi-
ciency and effectiveness of the information function (valuation).
He has published over 40 articles and is a frequently invited con-
ference speaker. He is a member of the executive committee of
the European Conference on the Evaluation of Information
Technology. He holds a PhD in Informatics (Delft University of
Technology), and MSc in Information Management (Tilburg
University).

Carole Brooke
Carole Brooke is currently Reader in the Faculty of Business and
Management at the University of Lincoln, UK. She was previ-
ously Lecturer in Information Technology at Durham University
Business School for five years. Her background is interdiscipli-
nary including a PhD in Information Technology and Business
Administration from City University Business School and an MA
in Archaeology and Anthropology from the University of
Cambridge. She has ten years’ commercial experience spanning
insurance, research and development, and recruitment consul-
tancy. Work to date has focused on the human issues of organi-
zational change, especially relating to information technology.
Amongst Dr Brooke’s current research projects are research into
the experiences of call centre employees (using critical manage-
ment theories) and an exploration of community project method-
ologies as a way of improving stakeholder involvement in
organizational change.

Robina Chatham
Robina Chatham has 14 years’ experience in IT management,
culminating in the position of European IT Director for a leading
merchant bank. She started her career as a mechanical engineer
within the ship building industry, where she pioneered the
introduction of computing onto the shop floor. This sparked off
an early interest in the people issues associated with IT. Now
turned an academic and psychologist, she uses her real world
experience to help senior IT managers improve their personal
impact and influence within a business context.

xiv
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
would do very well: but any English name would be better than the
entomologist's ponderous double name compounded out of two dead
languages.

Our black grasshopper lives in grass and herbage, in the shade of bushes
and trees, and so long as the weather is hot it is hard to find him, as he
keeps in the shade. He is furthermore the shyest and wariest of his family,
and ready to vanish on the least alarm. He does not leap, but slips away into
hiding; and if one goes too near, or attempts to take him, he suddenly
vanishes. He simply drops down through the leaves to the earth, and sits
close and motionless at the roots on the dark mould, and unless touched will
not move. When traced down to his hiding-place he leaps away, and again
sits motionless, where, owing to his dark colour on the dark soil, he is
invisible. Later, when the weather grows cool, he comes out and sits on a
leaf, basking by the hour in the sun, his eyes turned from it; and it is then
easy to find him, the dark colour making him appear very conspicuous on a
green leaf. Occasionally he sings in the afternoon, but, as a rule, he begins
at dusk, and continues for some hours. To sing, the males often go high up
in the bushes, and when emitting their sound are almost constantly on the
move.

The sound is a cricket-like chirp; it is never sustained, but in quality it

resembles the subtle musical shrilling of the viridissima, although it does
not carry half so far.

In disposition the two species, the black and great green grasshoppers,
are very unlike. The female viridissima, we have seen, is the most indolent
and placid creature imaginable, while the males are perpetually challenging
and fighting one another. The males of the black grasshopper I could never
detect fighting. It is not easy to observe them, as they sing mostly at night;
and as a rule when singing they are well hidden by the leaves. But I have
occasionally found two males singing together, apparently against each
other, when I would watch them, and although as they moved about they
constantly passed and repassed so close that they all but touched, they never
struck at each other, nor put themselves into fighting attitudes. One day I
found two males sitting on a leaf together, side by side, like the best of
friends, basking in the sun.
 The female, on the other hand, is a most unpleasant creature, so restless
that in confinement she spends the whole time in running about in her cage
or box, incessantly trying to get out, examining everything, eating of
everything given her, and persecuting any other insect placed with her.
When I put males and females together the poor males were kicked and
bitten until they died.

Before visiting Selborne in October, it had seemed to me that hunting for

this grasshopper was a most fascinating pursuit. It was very hard to find
him by day, and when by chance you caught sight of him, sitting on a green
leaf in the sun and looking like a small, very dark-coloured frog with
abnormally long hind legs, it was generally in a bramble bush, into which
he would vanish when approached too near.

When at Selborne, one evening I heard one singing among the herbage at
the foot of the Hanger, and next morning I found one at the same spot—a
female, sitting on a gold-red fallen beech leaf, her blackness on the brilliant
leaf making her very conspicuous. A little later, when the wet weather
improved, I found the grasshopper all about the village, and even in it; but it
was most abundant near the Well Head and in the hedges between Selborne
and Nore Hill. Here on a sunny morning I could find a score or more of
them, and at dark they could be heard in numbers chirping in all the hedges.

CHAPTER IX
The Selborne atmosphere—Unhealthy faces—Selborne Common—Character of scenery—
Wheatham Hill—Hampshire village churches—Gilbert White's strictures—Churches
big and little—The peasants' religious feeling—Charm of old village churches—
Seeking Priors Dean—Privett church—Blackmoor church—Churchyards—Change in
gravestones—Beauty of old gravestones—Red alga on gravestones—Yew trees in
churchyards—British dragon-tree—Farringdon village and yew—Crowhurst yew—
Hurstbourne Priors yew—How yew trees are injured.
 It is a pleasure to be at Selborne; nevertheless I find I always like
Selborne best when I am out of it, especially when I am rambling about that
bit of beautiful country on the border of which it lies. The memory of
Gilbert White; the old church with its low, square tower and its famous yew
tree; above all, the constant sight of the Hanger clothed in its beechen
woods—green, or bronze and red-gold, or purple-brown in leafless winter
—all these things do not prevent a sense of lassitude, of ill-being, which I
experience in the village when I am too long in it, and which vanishes when
I quit it, and seem to breathe a better air. This is no mere fancy, nor
something peculiar to myself; the natives, too, are subject to this secret
trouble, and are, some of them, conscious of it. Round about Selborne you
will find those who were born and bred in the village, who say they were
never well until they quitted it; and some of these declare that they would
not return even if some generous person were to offer them a cottage rent
free. The appearance of the people, too, may be considered in this
connection. Mary Russell Mitford exclaims in one of her village sketches
that there was not a pretty face in the country-side. The want of comeliness
which is so noticeable in the southern parts of Berkshire is not confined to
that county. The people of Berkshire and Hampshire, of the blonde type, are
very much alike. But there are degrees; and if you want to see, I will not say
a handsome, nor a pretty, but a passably fresh and pleasant face among the
cottagers, you must go out of Selborne to some neighbouring village to look
for it.

Selborne But this question does not now concern us. The best of
Common Selborne is the common on the hill—all the better for the
steep hill which must be climbed to get to it, since that
difficult way prevents the people from making too free use of it, and
regarding it as a sort of back-yard or waste place to throw their rubbish on.
It is a perpetual joy to the children. One morning in October I met there
some youngsters gathering kindling-wood, and feasting at the same time on
wild fruits—the sloes were just then at their best. They told me that they
had only recently come to live in Selborne from Farringdon, their native
village. "And which place do you like best?" I asked. "Selborne!" they
shouted in a breath, and indeed appeared surprised that I had asked such a
question. No wonder. This hill-top common is the most forest-like, the
wildest in England, and the most beautiful as well, both in its trees and
tangles of all kinds of wild plants that flourish in waste places, and in the
prospects which one gets of the surrounding country. Here, seeing the
happiness of the boys, I have wished to be a boy again. But one does not
think so much of this spot when one comes to know the country round, and
finds that Selborne Hill is but one of many hills of the same singular and
beautiful type, sloping away gently on one side, and presenting a bold,
almost precipitous front on the other, in most cases clothed on the steep side
with dense beech woods. It is now eight years since I began to form an
acquaintance with this east corner of Hampshire, but not until last October
(1902) did I know how beautiful it was. From Selborne Hill one sees
something of it; a better sight is obtained from Noire Hill, where one is able
to get some idea of the peculiar character of the scenery. It is all wildly
irregular, high and low grounds thrown together in a pretty confusion, and
the soil everywhere fertile, so that the general effect is of extreme richness.
One sees, too, that the human population is sparse, and that it has always
been as it is now, and man's work—his old irregular fields, and the unkept
hedges which, like the thickets on the waste places, are self-planted, and
have been self-planted for centuries, and the old deep-winding lanes and
by-roads—have come at last to seem one with nature's work. Out of this
broken, variegated, richly green surface, here and there, in a sort of range,
but irregular like all else, the hills, or hangers, lift their steep, bank-like
fronts—splendid masses of red and russet gold against the soft grey-blue
autumnal sky. It is delightful to walk through this bit of country from Nore
Hill, and from hill to hill, across green fields, for the farms here are like
wild lands that all are free to use, to Wheatham Hill, the highest point,
which rises 800 feet above the sea-level. From this elevation one looks over
a great part of that green variegated country of the Hangers, and sees on one
hand where it fades close by into the sand and pine district beginning at
Wolmer Forest, and on another side, beyond the little town of Petersfield,
the region of great rolling downs stretching far away into Sussex.

Village In my rambles about this corner of Hampshire, during

churches which I visited all the villages nearest to Selborne—
Empshott, Hawkley, Greatham, East and West Tisted,
Worldham, Priors Dean, Colemore, Privett, Froxfield, Hartley Maudit,
Blackmore, Oakhanger, Kingsley, Farringdon and Newton Valence—I could
not help thinking a good deal about Hampshire village churches generally.
It was a subject which had often enough been in my mind before in other
parts of the county, but it now came back to me in connection with Gilbert
White's strictures on these sacred buildings. Their "meanness" produced a
feeling in him which is the nearest approach to indignation discoverable in
his pages. He is speaking of jackdaws breeding in rabbit holes, and
shrewdly conjectures that this habit has arisen on account of the absence of
steeples and towers suitable as nesting-places. "Many Hampshire places of
worship," he remarks, "make no better appearance than dovecotes." He
envied Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, the Fens of Lincolnshire, and
other districts, the number of spires which presented themselves in every
point of view, and concludes: "As an admirer of prospects I have reason to
lament this want in my own county, for such objects are very necessary
ingredients in an elegant landscape."

The honoured historian of the parish of Selborne makes me shudder in

this passage. But I am, perhaps, giving too much importance to his words,
since one may judge, from his mention of Norfolk in this connection as
being even worse off than his own county, that he was not well informed on
the subject. Norfolk, like Somerset, abounds in grand old churches of the
Perpendicular period. That smallness, or "meanness" as he expresses it, of
the Hampshire churches, is, to my mind, one of their greatest merits. The
Hampshire village would not possess that charm which we find in it—its
sweet rusticity and homeliness, and its harmonious appearance in the midst
of a nature green and soft and beautiful—but for that essential feature and
part of it, the church which does not tower vast and conspicuous as a
gigantic asylum or manufactory from among lowly cottages dwarfed by its
proximity to the appearance of pigmy-built huts in the Aruwhimi forest.
These immense churches which in recent years have lifted their tall spires
and towers amidst lowly surroundings in many rural places, are, as a rule,
the work of some zealot who has seared his sense of beauty with a hot iron,
or else of a new over-rich lord of the manor, who must have all things new,
including a big new church to worship a new God in—his own peculiar
Stock Exchange God, who is a respecter of wealthy persons. Here in
Hampshire we have seen the old but well preserved village church pulled
down—doubtless with the consent of the ecclesiastical authorities—its
ancient monuments broken up and carted away, its brasses made into fire
ornaments by cottagers or sold as old metal, and the very gravestones used
in paving the scullery and offices of the grand new parsonage built to match
the grand new church.

Peasants' When coming upon one of these "necessary ingredients

religious in an elegant landscape" in some rural spot I have
feeling sometimes wondered what the feeling of the people who
have spent their lives there can be about it. What effect has
the new vast building, with its highly decorated yet cold and vacant interior,
on their dim minds—on their religion, let us say? It may be a poor
unspiritual sort of religion, based on old traditions and associations, mostly
local; but shall we scorn it on that account? If we look a little closely into
the matter, we see that all men, even the most intellectual, the most
spiritual, are subject to this feeling in some degree, that it is in all religions.
That which from use, from association, becomes symbolic of faith is in
itself sacred. At the present time the Church is torn with dissensions
because of this very question. Certain bodily positions and signs and
gestures, and woven fabrics and garments of many patterns and colours, and
wood and stone and metal objects, and lighted candles and perfumes—mere
hay and stubble to others who have different symbols—are things essential
to worship in some. Touch these things and you hurt their souls; you
deprive them of their means of communication with another world. So the
poor peasant who was born and lives in a thatched cottage, with his limited
intelligence, his animism, associates the idea of the unseen world with the
sacred objects he has seen and known and handled—the small ancient
building, the red-barked, dark-leafed yew, the green mounds and lichened
gravestones among which he played as a child, and the dim, low-roofed
interior of what was to him God's House. Whatever there is in his mind that
is least earthly, whatever thoughts he may have of the unseen world and a
life beyond this life, were inseparably bound up with these visible things.

We need not follow this line any farther; those who believe with me that
the sense of the beautiful is God's best gift to the human soul will see that I
have put the matter on other and higher grounds. The small village church
with its low tower or grey-shingled spire among the shade trees, is beautiful
chiefly because man and nature with its softening processes have combined
to make it a fit part of the scene, a building which looks as natural and
harmonious as an old hedge which man planted once and nature replanted
many times, and as many an old thatched timbered cottage, and many an
old grey ruin, ivy-grown, with red valerian blooming on its walls.

To pull down one of these churches to put in its place a gigantic Gothic
structure in brick or stone, better suited in size (and ugliness) for a London
or Liverpool church than for a small rustic village in Hampshire, is nothing
less than a crime.

Seeking Priors When calling to mind the churches known to me in this

Dean part of Hampshire, I always think with peculiar pleasure of
the smaller ones, and perhaps with the most pleasure of the
smallest of all—Priors Dean.

It happened that the maps which I use in my Hampshire rambles and

which I always considered the best—Bartholomew's two miles to the inch
—did not mark Priors Dean, so that I had to go and find it for myself. I
went with a friend one excessively hot day in July, by Empshott and
Hawkley through deep by-roads so deep and narrow and roofed over with
branches as to seem in places like tunnels. On that hot day in the silent time
of year it was strangely still, and gave one the feeling of being in a country
long deserted by man. Its only inhabitants now appeared to be the
bullfinches. In these deep shaded lanes one constantly hears the faint
plaintive little piping sound, the almost inaudible alarm note of the
concealed bird; and at intervals, following the sound, he suddenly dashes
out, showing his sharp-winged shape and clear grey and black upper
plumage marked with white for a moment or two before vanishing once
more in the overhanging foliage.

We went a long way round, but at last coming to an open spot we saw
two cottages and two women and a boy standing talking by a gate, and of
these people we asked the way to Priors Dean. They could not tell us. They
knew it was not far away—a mile perhaps; but they had never been to it,
nor seen it, and didn't well know the direction. The boy when asked shook
his head. A middle-aged man was digging about thirty yards away, and to
him one of the women now called, "Can you tell them the way to Priors
Dean?"
 The man left off digging, straightened himself, and gazed steadily at us
for some moments. He was one of the usual type—nine in every ten farm
labourers in this corner of Hampshire are of it—thinnish, of medium height,
a pale, parchment face, rather large straightish nose, pale eyes with little
speculation in them, shaved mouth and chin, and small side whiskers as our
fathers wore them. The moustache has not yet been adopted by these
conservatives. The one change they have made is, alas! in their dress—the
rusty black coat for the smock frock.

When he had had his long gaze, he said, "Priors Dean?"

"Yes, Priors Dean," repeated the woman, raising her voice.

He turned up two spadefuls of earth, then asked again, "Priors Dean?"

"Priors Dean!" shouted the woman. "Can't you tell 'em how to get to it?"
Then she laughed. She had perhaps come from some other part of the
country where minds are not quite so slow, and where the slow-minded
person is treated as being deaf and shouted at.

Then, at last, he stuck his spade into the soil, and leaving it, slowly
advanced to the gate and told us to follow a path which he pointed out, and
when we got on the hill we would see Priors Dean before us.

Churches old And that was how we found it. There is a satirical saying
and new in the other villages that if you want to find the church at
Priors Dean you must first cut down the nettles. There were
no nettles nor weeds of any kind, only the small ancient church with its
little shingled spire standing in the middle of a large green graveyard with
about a dozen or fifteen gravestones scattered about, three old tombs, and,
close to the building, an ancient yew tree. This is a big, and has been a
bigger, tree, as a large part of the trunk has perished on one side, but as it
stands it measures nearly twenty-four feet round a yard from the earth. This,
with a small farmhouse, in old times a manor house, and its outbuildings
and a cottage or two, make the village. So quiet a spot is it that to see a
human form or hear a human voice comes almost as a surprise. The little
antique church, the few stones, the dark ancient tree—these are everything,
and the effect on the mind is strangely grateful—a sense of enduring peace,
with something of that solitariness and desolation which we find in unspoilt
wildernesses.

From these smallest churches, which appear like a natural growth where
they are seen, I turn to the large and new, and the largest of all at this place
—that of Privett. From its gorgeous yet vacant and cold interior, and from
the whole vast structure, including that necessary ingredient in an elegant
landscape, the soaring spire visible for many miles around, I turn away as
from a jarring and discordant thing—the feeling one experiences at the sight
of those brand-new big houses built by over-rich stock-jobbers on many
hills and open heaths in Surrey and, alas! in Hampshire.

I do not, however, say that all new and large churches raised in small
rustic centres appear as discordant things. Even in the group of villages
which I have named there is a new and comparatively large one which
moves one to admiration the church of Blackmoor. Here the vegetation and
surroundings are unlike those which accord best with the small typical
structures, the low tower and shingled spire. The tall, square tower of
Blackmoor, of white stone roofed with red tiles, rises amid the pines of
Wolmer Forest, simple and beautiful in shape, and gives a touch of grace
and grateful colour to that darker, austere nature. From every point of view
it is a pleasure to the eye, and because of its enduring beauty the memory of
the man who raised it is like a perfume in the wilderness.

It is, however, time that bestows the best grace, the indescribable charm
to the village church—long centuries of time, which gives the feeling, the
expression, of immemorial peace to the weathered and ivied building itself
and the surrounding space, the churchyard, with its green heaps, and
scattered stones, and funeral yew.

Change in The associated feeling, the expression, is undoubtedly the

gravestones chief thing in the general effect, but the constituents or
objects which compose the scene are in themselves pleasing;
and one scarcely less important than the building itself, the universal grass,
the dark, red-barked tree, is the gravestone. I mean the gravestone that is
attractive in shape, which may be seen in every old village churchyard in
Hampshire; for not all the stones are of this character. The stone that is
beautiful dates back half a century at least, but very few are as old as a
century and a half. When we get that far and farther back the inscription is
obliterated or indecipherable. Only here and there we may by chance find
some stone, half buried in the soil, of an exceptional hardness, marking the
spot where lieth one who departed this life in the seventeenth or early in the
eighteenth century. There are many old stones, it is true, with nothing
legible on them, but one does not know how old they are. It is not that these
gravestones are beautiful only because they are old, and have had their hard
surface softened and embroidered with green moss and lichen of many
shades from pale-grey to orange and red and brown. The form of the stone,
the stone-cutter's work, was beautiful before Nature began to work on it
with her sunshine, her rain, her invisible seed. I cannot think why this old
fashion, or rather, let us say, this tender, sacred custom, of marking the last
resting-place of the dead with a memorial satisfying to the æsthetic sense,
should have gone or died out. The gravestones used at the present time are,
as a rule, twice as big as the old ones, and are perfectly plain—immense
stone slabs, inscribed with big, fat, black letters differing in size, the whole
inscription curiously resembling the local auctioneer's bills to be seen
pasted up on barn-doors, fences, and other suitable places. So big and hard,
and bold, and ugly—I try not to see them!

Look from these at the old stone which the earthworms have been busy
trying to bury for a century, until the lower half of the inscription is
underground; the stone which the lichen has embossed and richly coloured;
round which the grass grows so close and lovingly, and the small creeping
ivy tries to cover. This which has been added to it is but a part of its beauty:
you see that its lines are graceful, that they were made so; that the
inscription—"Here lyeth the body," etc.—is not cut in letters in use in
newspapers and advertising placards, and have therefore no common nor
degrading associations, but are letters of other forms, graceful, too, in their
lines; and that above the inscription there are sculptured and symbolic
figures and lines—emblems of mortality, eternal hope, and a future life—
heads of cherubs, winged and blowing on horns, and the sun and wings;
skulls and crossbones, and hour-glass and scythe; the funeral urn and
weeping-willow; the lighted torch; the heart in flames, or bleeding, or
transfixed with arrows; the angel's trumpet, the crown of glory, the palm
and the lily, the laurel leaf, and many more.
 Did we think this art, or this custom, too little a thing to cherish any
longer? I cannot find any person with a word to say about it. I have tried
and the result was curious. I have invited persons of my acquaintance into
an old churchyard and begged them to look on this stone and on this—the
hard ugliness of one, an insult to the dead, and the beauty, the pathos, of the
other. And they have immediately fallen into a melancholy silence, or else
they have suddenly become angry, apparently for no cause. But the reason
probably was that they had never given a thought to the subject, that when
they had buried someone dear to them—a mother or wife or daughter—they
simply went to the stonemason and ordered a gravestone, leaving him to
fashion it in his own way. The reason of the reason—the full explanation of
the singular fact that they, in these house-beautiful and generally art-
worshipping times, had given no thought to the matter until it was
unexpectedly sprung upon them; and that if they had lived, say, a hundred
years ago, they would have given it some thought—this the reader will
easily find out for himself.

Beauty of old It is comforting to reflect that gravestones do not last for

gravestones ever, nor for very long; and in the meantime Nature is doing
what she can with our ugly modern memorials, touching,
softening, and tingeing them with her mosses, lichens, and with algæ—her
beautiful iolithus. In most churchyards in southern England we see many
stones stained a peculiar colour, a bright rust-red, darkest in dry weather,
and brightest in wet summers, often varying to pink and purple and orange;
but whatever the hue or shade the effect on the grey stone, lichened or not,
is always beautiful. It is not a lichen; when the staining is looked closely at
nothing is seen but a roughness, a powdery appearance, on the stone's
surface. It is an aerial alga of the genus Croöleptus, confined to the southern
half of England, and most common in Hampshire, where its beautifying
blush may sometimes be seen on old stone walls of churches, and old
houses and ruins; but it flourishes most on gravestones, especially in moist
situations. The stone must not be too hard, and must, moreover, be acted on
by the weather for well-nigh half a century before the alga begins to show
on it; but you will sometimes see it on an exceptionally soft stone dating no
more than thirty or forty years back. On old stones it is very common, and
peculiarly beautiful in wet summers. In June 1902, after many days of rain,
I stood one evening at the little gate at Brockenhurst churchyard, and
counted between me and the church twenty gravestones stained with the red
alga, showing a richness and variety of colouring never seen before, the
result of so much wet weather. For this alga, which plays so important a
part in nature's softening and beautifying effect on man's work—which is
mentioned in no book unless it be some purely technical treatise dealing
with the lower vegetable forms—this alga, despite its aerial habit, is still in
essence a water-plant: the sun and dry wind burn its life out and darken it to
the colour of ironstone, so that to anyone who may notice the dark stain it
seems a colour of the stone itself; but when rain falls the colour freshens
and brightens as if the old grey stone had miraculously been made to live.

Churchyard If never a word has been written about that red colour
yews with which Nature touches the old stones to make them
beautiful, a thousand or ten thousand things have been said
about the yew, the chief feature and ornament of the village churchyard, and
many conjectures have we seen as to the reason of the very ancient custom
of planting this tree where the dead are laid. The tree itself gives a better
reason than any contained in books. It says something to the soul in man
which the talking or chattering yew omitted to tell the modern poet; but
very long ago someone said, in the Death of Fergus, "Patriarch of long-
lasting woods is the yew; sacred to forests as is well known." That ancient
sacred character, which survived the introduction of Christianity, lives still
in every mind that has kept any vestige of animism, the root and essence of
all that is wonderful and sacred in nature. That red and purple bark is the
very colour of life, and this tree's life, compared with other things, is
everlasting. The stones we set up as memorials grow worn and seamed and
hoary with age, even like men, and crumble to dust at last; in time new
stones are put in their place, and these, too, grow old and perish, and are
succeeded by others; and through all changes, through the ages, the tree
lives on unchanged. With its huge, tough, red trunk; its vast, knotted arms
outstretched; its rich, dark mantle of undying foliage, it stands like a
protecting god on the earth, patriarch and monarch of woods; and indeed it
seems but right and natural that not to oak nor holly, nor any other
reverenced tree, but to the yew it was given to keep guard over the bodies
and souls of those who have been laid in the earth.

The yew is sometimes called the "Hampshire weed," on account of its

abundance in the county; if it must have a second name, I suggest that the
Hampshire or British dragon-tree would be a better and more worthy one. It
would admirably fit some ancient churchyard yews in the neighbourhood of
Selborne, especially that of Farringdon.

In the great mass of literature concerning Gilbert White, there is

curiously little said about this village; yet it has one of the most interesting
old churches in the county—the church in which White officiated for over a
quarter of a century, during all the best years of his life, in fact; for when he
resigned the curacy at Farringdon to take that of Selborne, for which he had
waited so long, he was within two years of bidding a formal farewell to
natural history, and within eight of his death. The church register from 1760
to 1785 is written in his clear, beautiful hand, and in the rectory garden
there is a large Spanish chestnut-tree planted by him. Although not so
fortunate in its surroundings as Selborne, with its Lyth and flowery Bourne
and wooded Hanger, Farringdon village, with its noble church and fine old
farm-buildings and old cottages, is the better village of the two. At the side
of the churchyard there is an old oast-house, now used as a barn, which for
quaintness and beauty has hardly its match in England. The churchyard
itself is a pretty, peaceful wilderness, deep in grass, with ivy and bramble
hanging to the trees, and spreading over tombs and mounds. Long may it be
kept sacred from the gardener, with his abhorred pruning-hook, his basket
of geranium cuttings—inharmonious flower!—and his brushwood broom to
make it all tidy. Finally, there is the wonderful old yew.

Farringdon A great deal has been written first and last about the
yew Selborne yew, which appears to rank as one of the half-
dozen biggest yew trees in the country. Its age is doubtless
very great, and may greatly exceed the "thousand years" usually given to a
very large churchyard yew. The yews planted two hundred years ago by
Gilbert White's grandfather in the parsonage garden close by, are but
saplings in comparison. A black poplar would grow a bigger trunk in less
than ten years. The Selborne yew was indeed one of the antiquities of the
village when White described it a century and a quarter ago. It is, moreover,
the best-grown, healthiest, and most vigorous-looking yew of its size in
Britain. The Farringdon yew, the bigger tree, has a far more aged aspect—
the appearance of a tree which has been decaying for an exceedingly long
period.

Trees, like men, have their middle period, when their increase slowly
lessens until it ceases altogether; their long stationary period, and their long
decline: each of these periods may, in the case of the yew, extend to
centuries; and we know that behind them all there may have been centuries
of slow growth. The Selborne yew has added something to its girth since it
was measured by White, and is now twenty-seven feet round in its biggest
part, and exceeds by at least three feet the big yew at Priors Dean, and the
biggest of the three churchyard yews at Hawkley. The Farringdon yew in its
biggest part, about five feet from the ground, measures thirty feet, and to
judge by its ruinous condition it must have ceased adding to its bulk more
than a century ago. One regrets that White gave no account of its size and
appearance in his day. It has, in the usual manner, decayed above and
below, the upper branches dying down while the trunk rots away beneath,
the tree meanwhile keeping itself alive and renewing its youth, as it were,
by means of that power which the yew possesses of saving portions of its
trunk from complete decay by covering them inside and out with new bark.

In the churchyard yew at Crowhurst, Surrey, we see that the upper part
of the tree has decayed until nothing but the low trunk, crowned with a poor
fringe of late branches, has been left; in this case the trunk remains
outwardly almost entire—an empty shell or cylinder, large enough to
accommodate fourteen persons on the circular bench placed within the
cavity. In other cases we see that the trunk has been eaten through and
through, and split up into strips; that the strips, covered inside with new
bark, have become separate trunks, in some instances united above, as in
that of the yew in South Hayling churchyard. The Farringdon tree has
decayed below in this way; long strips from the top to the roots have rotted
and turned to dust; and the sound portions, covered in and out with bark,
form a group of half a dozen flattened boles, placed in a circle, all but one,
which springs from the middle, and forms a fantastically twisted column in
the centre of the edifice. Between this central strangely shaped bole, now
dead, and the surrounding ring there is space for a man to walk round in.

It is a wonderful tree, which White looked at every day for five-and-

twenty years, yet never mentioned, and which Loe says nothing about in his
Yew Trees of Great Britain and Ireland. The title of this work is misleading:
Famous Yew Trees it should have been, since it is nothing but a collection of
facts as to size, supposed age, etc., of trees that have often been measured
and described, and are accordingly well known. It is well, to my way of
thinking, that he attempted nothing more. It is always a depressing thought,
when one has discovered a wonderful or a beautiful thing, that a very full
and very exact account of it is and must be contained in some musty
monograph by some industrious, dreary person. At all events, I can say that
the yew trees which have most attracted me, which come up when I think of
the yew as a wonderful and a sacred tree, are not in the book. Of my
Hampshire favourites I will, for a special reason, speak of but one more—
the yew in the churchyard of Hurstbourne Priors, a small village on the
upper Test, near Andover.

Hurstbourne This tree, which is doubtless very aged, has not grown an
Priors yew enormous trunk, nor is it high for an old yew, but its
appearance is nevertheless strangely impressive, owing to
the length of its lower horizontal branches, which extend to a distance of
thirty to thirty-five feet from the trunk, and would lie on the ground if not
kept up by props. Another thing which make one wonder is the number of
graves that are crowded together beneath these vast sheltering arms. One
may count over thirty stones, some very old; many more have probably
perished, and there are besides many green mounds. I have watched in a
churchyard in the Midlands a grave being dug under a yew, at about three
yards' distance from the trunk: a barrowful of roots was taken out during the
process. It seemed to me that a very serious injury was being inflicted on
the tree, and it is probable that many of our very old churchyard yews have
been dwarfed in their growth by such cutting of the roots. But what shall we
say of the Hurstbourne Priors yew, from which not one but thirty or forty
barrow-loads of living roots must have been taken at various times to make
room for so many coffins! And what is the secret of the custom in this, and
probably other villages, of putting the dead so close to or under the shelter
of the tree?

Compare this Hurstbourne Priors yew, and many other ancient

churchyard yews in Hampshire, with that of Selborne, which albeit
probably no older is double their size: is it not probable that the Selborne
tree is the largest, best grown, and most vigorous of the old yews because it
has not been mutilated at its roots as the others have been?

There is but one grave beneath or near this tree; not the grave of any
important person, but a nameless green mound of some obscure peasant. I
had often looked with a feeling almost of astonishment at that solitary
conspicuous mound in such a place, midway between the trunk of the tree
and the church door, wondering who it was whose poor remains had been
so honoured, and why it was. Then by chance I found out the whole story;
but it came to me in scraps, at different times and places, and that is how I
will give it to the reader, in fragments, in the course of the following
chapter.

CHAPTER X
Wolmer Forest—Charm of contrast and novelty in scenery—Aspect of Wolmer—Heath
and pine—Colour of water and soil—An old woman's recollections—Story of the
"Selborne mob"—Past and present times compared—Hollywater Clump—Age of
trees—Bird life in the forest—Teal in their breeding haunts—Boys in the forest—
Story of the horn-blower.

The first part of the story of that Selborne mound in a strange place was
heard at Wolmer Forest, over five years ago, during my first prolonged visit
to that spot. I have often been there since, and have stayed many days, but a
first impression of a place, as of a face, is always the best, the brightest, the
truest, and I wish to describe Wolmer as I saw it then.
 It struck me on that visit that the pleasure we have in visible nature
depends in a measure on contrast and novelty. Never is moist verdure so
refreshing and delightful to the eye as when we come to it from brown
heaths and grey barren downs and uplands. So, too, the greenness of the
green earth sharpens our pleasure in all stony and waste places; trim flower
gardens show us the beauty of thorns and briars, and make us in love with
desolation. As in light and shade, wet and dry, tempest and calm, so the
peculiar attractions of each scene and aspect of nature are best "illustrated
by their contraries."

I had, accordingly, the best preparation for a visit to Wolmer by a few

days' ramble in Alice Holt Forest, with its endless oaks, and in the luxuriant
meadows and cool shady woods at Waverley Abbey. It was a great change
to Wolmer Forest. Although its soil is a "hungry, bare sand," it has long
been transformed from the naked heath of Gilbert White's time to a vast
unbroken plantation. Looked upon from some eminence it has a rough, dark
aspect. There are no smooth summits and open pleasant places; all is
covered by the shaggy mantle of the pines. But it is nowhere gloomy, as
pine woods are apt to be: the trees are not big enough, on account of that
hungry sand in which they are rooted, or because they are not yet very old.
The pines not being too high and shady to keep the sun and air out, the old
aboriginal vegetation has not been killed: in most places the ling forms a
thick undergrowth, and looks green, while outside of the forest, in the full
glare of the sun, it has a harsh, dry, dead appearance.

On account of this abundance of ling a strange and lovely appearance is

produced in some favourable years, when the flowers are in great profusion
and all the plants blossom at one time. That most beautiful sight of the early
spring, when the bloom of the wild hyacinth forms a sheet of azure colour
under the woodland trees, is here repeated in July, but with a difference of
hue both in the trees above and in the bloom beneath.

Wolmer Forest In May, Wolmer is comparatively flowerless, and there is

no bright colour, except that of the earth itself in some
naked spot. The water of the sluggish boggy streamlets in the forest,
tributaries of the well-named Dead Water, takes a deep red or orange hue
from the colour of the soil. The sand abounds with ironstone, which in the
mass is deep rust-red- and purple-coloured. When crushed and pulverised
by traffic and weather on the roads, it turns to a vivid chrome yellow. In the
hot noonday sun the straight road that runs through the forest appeared like
a yellow band or ribbon. That was a curious and novel picture, which I
often had before me during the excessively dry and windy weather in May
—the vast whity-blue, hot sky, without speck or stain of cloud above, and
the dark forest covering the earth, cut through by that yellow zone,
extending straight away until it was lost in the hazy distance. Even stranger
was the appearance when the wind blew strongest and raised clouds of dust
from the road, which flew like fiery yellow vapours athwart the black pines.

The "Selborne In a small house by the roadside in the middle of the

mob" forest I found a temporary home. My aged landlady proved
a great talker, and treated me to a good deal of Hampshire
dialect. Her mind was well stored with ancient memories. At first I let her
ramble on without paying too much attention; but at length, while speaking
of the many little ups and downs of her not uneventful life, she asked me if
I knew Selborne, and then informed me that she was a native of that village,
and that her family had lived there for generations. Her mother had reached
the age of eighty-six years; she had married her third husband when over
seventy. By her first she had had two and by her second thirteen children,
and my informant, who is now aged seventy-six, was the last born. This
wonderful mother of hers, who had survived three husbands, and whose
memory went back several years into the eighteenth century, had
remembered the Rev. Gilbert White very well: she was aged about twelve
when he died. It was wonderful, she said, how many interesting things she
used to tell about him; for Gilbert White, whose name was known to the
great world outside of his parish, was often in her mind when she recalled
her early years. Unfortunately, these interesting things had now all slipped
out of my landlady's memory. Whenever I brought her to the point she
would stand with eyes cast down, the fingers of her right hand on her
forehead, trying—trying to recall something to tell me: a simple creature,
who was without imagination, and could invent nothing. Then little by little
she would drift off into something else—to recollections of people and
events not so remote in time, scenes she had witnessed herself, and which
had made a deeper impression on her mind. One was how her father, her
mother's second husband, had acted as horn-blower to the "Selborne mob,"
when the poor villagers were starving; and how, blowing on his horn, he
had assembled his fellow-revolutionists, and led them to an attack on the
poorhouse, where they broke down the doors and made a bonfire of the
furniture; then on to the neighbouring village of Headley to get recruits for
their little army. Then the soldiery arrived on the scene, and took them
prisoners and sent them to Winchester, where they were tried by some little
unremembered Judge Jeffreys, who sentenced many or most of them to
transportation; but not the horn-blower, who had escaped, and was in hiding
among the beeches of the famous Selborne Hanger. Only at midnight he
would steal down into the village to get a bite of food and hear the news
from his vigorous and vigilant wife. At length, during one of these midnight
descents, he was seen, and captured, and sent to Winchester. But by this
time the authorities had grown sick—possibly ashamed—of dealing so
harshly with a few poor peasants, whose sufferings had made them mad,
and the horn-blower was pardoned, and died in bed at home when his time
came.

I did not cease questioning the poor woman, because she would not
admit that all she had heard about Gilbert White was gone past recall. Often
and often had she thought of what her mother had told her. Up to within two
or three years ago she remembered it all so well. What was it now? Once
more, standing dejected in the middle of the room, she would cudgel her old
brains. So much had happened since she was a girl. She had been brought
up to farm-work. Here would follow the names of various farms in the
parishes of Selborne, Newton Valence, and Oakhanger, where she had
worked, mostly in the fields; and of the farmers, long dead and gone most
of them, who had employed her. All her life she had worked hard,
struggling to live. When people complained of hard times now, of the little
that was paid them for their work, she and her husband remembered what it
was thirty and forty and fifty years ago, and they wondered what people
really wanted. Cheap food, cheap clothing, cheap education for the children
—everything was cheap now, and the pay more. And she had had so many
children to bring up—ten; and seven of them were married, and were now
having so many children of their own that she could hardly keep count of
them.
 It was idle to listen; and at last, in desperation, I would jump up and rush
out, for the wind was calling in the pines, and the birds were calling, and
what they had to tell was just then of more interest than any human story.

Not far from my cottage there was a hill, from the summit of which the
whole area of the forest was visible, and the country all round for many
leagues beyond it. I did not like this hill, and refused to pay it a second visit.
The extent of country it revealed made the forest appear too small; it spoilt
the illusion of a practically endless wilderness, where I could stroll about all
day and see no cultivated spot, and no house, and perhaps no human form.
It was, moreover, positively disagreeable to be stared at across the ocean of
pines by a big, brand-new, red-brick mansion, standing conspicuous,
unashamed, affronting nature, on some wide heath or lonely hillside.

Hollywater A second hill, not far from the first, was preferable when
Clump I wished for a wide horizon, or to drink the wind and the
music of the wind. Round and dome-like, it stood alone; and
although not so high as its neighbour, it was more conspicuous, and seen
from a distance appeared to be vastly higher. The reason of this was that it
was crowned with a grove of Scotch firs with boles that rose straight and
smooth and mast-like to a height of about eighty feet; thus, seen from afar,
the hill looked about a hundred feet higher than it actually was, the tree-tops
themselves forming a thick, round dome, conspicuous above the
surrounding forest, and Wolmer's most prominent feature. I have often said
of Hampshire—very many persons have said the same—that it lacks one
thing—sublimity, or, let us say, grandeur. I have been over all its high, open
down country, and upon all its highest hills, which, although rising to a
thousand feet above the sea at one point, yet do not impress one so much as
the South Downs; and I have been in all its forest lands, which have
wildness and a thousand beauties, and one asks for nothing better. But the
Hollywater Clump in Wolmer Forest as soon as I come in sight of it wakes
in me another sense and feeling; and I have found in conversation with
others on this subject that they are affected in the same way. I doubt if
anyone can fail to experience such a feeling when looking on that great hill-
top grove, a stupendous pillared temple, with its dome-like black roof
against the sky, standing high above and dominating the sombre pine and
heath country for miles around.
Bird life in the Gilbert White described Wolmer as a naked heath with
forest very few trees growing on it. The Hollywater Clump must,
one cannot but think, have been planted before or during his
time. One old native of Wolmer, whose memory over five years ago went
back about sixty years, assured me that the trees looked just as big when he
was a little boy as they do now. Undoubtedly they are very old, and many,
we see, are decaying, and some are dead, and for many years past they have
been dying and falling.

The green woodpecker had discovered the unsoundness of many of

them; in some of the trunks, in their higher part, the birds had made several
holes. These were in line, one above the other, like stops in a flute. Most of
these far-up houses or flats were tenanted by starlings. This was only too
apparent for the starling, although neat and glossy in his dress is an untidy
tenant, and smears the trunk beneath the entrance to his nest with
numberless droppings. You might fancy that he had set himself to
whitewash his tenement, and had carelessly capsized his little bucket of
lime on the threshold.

It was pleasant in the late afternoon to sit at the feet of these stately red
columns—this brave company of trees, that are warred against by all the
winds of heaven—and look upon the black legions of the forest covering
the earth beneath them for miles. High up in the swaying, singing tops a
kind of musical talk was audible—the starlings' medley of clinking,
chattering, wood-sawing, knife-grinding, whistling, and bell-like sounds.
Higher still, above the tree-tops, the jackdaws were at their aerial gambols,
calling to one another, exulting in the wind. They were not breeding there,
but were attracted to the spot by the height of the hill, with its crown of
soaring trees. Some strong-flying birds—buzzards, kites, vultures, gulls,
and many others—love to take their exercise far from earth, making a
playground of the vast void heaven. The wind-loving jackdaw, even in his
freest, gladdest moments, never wholly breaks away from the earth, and for
a playground prefers some high, steep place—a hill, cliff, spire, or tower—
where he can perch at intervals, and from which he can launch himself, as
the impulse takes him, either to soar and float above, or to cast himself
down into the airy gulf below.
 Stray herons, too, come to the trees to roost. The great bird could be seen
far off, battling with the wind, rising and falling, blown to this side and that,
now displaying his pale under-surface, and now the slaty blue of his broad,
slow-flapping wings.

As the sun sank nearer to the horizon, the tall trunks would catch the
level beams and shine like fiery pillars, and the roof thus upheld would look
darker and gloomier by contrast. With the passing of that red light, the
lively bird-notes would cease, the trees would give forth a more solemn,
sea-like sound, and the day would end.

My days, during all the time I spent at Wolmer, when I had given up
asking questions, and my poor old woman had ceased cudgelling her brains
for lost memories, were spent with the birds. The yaffle, nightjar, and turtle-
dove were the most characteristic species. Wolmer is indeed the metropolis
of the turtle-doves, even as Savernake is (or was) that of the jays and
jackdaws. All day long the woods were full of the low, pleasing sound of
their cooing: as one walked among the pines they constantly rose up in
small flocks from the ground with noisy wines and as they flew out into
some open space to vanish again in the dark foliage, their wings in the
strong sunlight often looked white as silver. But the only native species I
wish to speak of is the teal as I found it a little over five years ago. In
Wolmer these pretty entertaining little ducks have bred uninterruptedly for
centuries, but I greatly fear that the changes now in progress—the increase
of the population, building, the large number of troops kept close by, and
perhaps, too, the slow drying up of the marshy pools—will cause them to
forsake their ancient haunts.

Teal By chance I very soon discovered their choicest

breeding-place, not far from that dome-shaped, fir-crowned
hill which was my principal landmark. This was a boggy place, thirty or
forty acres in extent surrounded by trees and overgrown with marsh weeds
and grasses, and in places with rushes. Cotton grass grew in the drier parts,
and the tufts nodding in the wind looked at a distance like silvery white
flowers. At one end of the marsh there were clumps of willow and alder,
where the reed-bunting was breeding and the grasshopper warbler uttered
his continuous whirring sound, which seemed to accord with the singing of
the wind in the pines. At the other end there was open water with patches of
rushes growing in it; and here at the water's edge, shaded by a small fir, I
composed myself on a bed of heather to watch the birds.

The inquisitive moor-hens were the first to appear, uttering from time to
time their sharp, loud protest. Their suspicion lessened by degrees, but was
never wholly laid aside; and one bird, slyly leaving the water, made a wide
circuit and approached me through the trees in order to get a better view of
me. A sudden movement on my part, when he was only three yards from
me, gave him a terrible fright. Mallards showed themselves at intervals,
swimming into the open water, or rising a few yards above the rushes, then
dropping out of sight again. Where the rushes grew thin and scattered,
ducklings appeared, swimming one behind the other, busily engaged in
snatching insects from the surface. By-and-by a pair of teal rose up, flew
straight towards me, and dropped into the open water within eighteen yards
of where I sat. They were greatly excited, and no sooner touched the water
than they began calling loudly; then, from various points, others rose and
hurried to join them, and in a few moments there were eleven, all disporting
themselves on the water at that short distance. Teal are always tamer than
ducks of other kinds, but the tameness of these Wolmer birds was
astonishing and very delightful. For a few moments I imagined they were
excited at my presence, but it very soon appeared that they were entirely
absorbed in their own affairs and cared nothing about me. What a
wonderfully lively, passionate, variable, and even ridiculous little creature
the teal is! Compared with his great relations—swans, geese, and the bigger
ducks—he is like a monkey or squirrel among stately bovine animals. Now
the teal have a world-wide range, being found in all climates, and are of
many species; they are, moreover, variable in plumage, some species having
an exceedingly rich and beautiful colouring; but wherever found, and
however different in colour, they are much the same in disposition—they
are loquacious, excitable, violent in their affections beyond other ducks,
and, albeit highly intelligent, more fearless than other birds habitually
persecuted by man. A sedate teal is as rare as a sober-coloured humming-
bird. The teal is also of so social a temper that even in the height of the
breeding season he is accustomed to meet his fellows at little gatherings. A
curious thing is that at these meetings they do not, like most social birds,
fall into one mind, and comport themselves in an orderly, disciplined
manner, all being moved by one contagious impulse. On the contrary, each
bird appears to have an impulse of his own, and to follow it without regard
to what his fellows may be doing. One must have his bath, another his
frolic; one falls to courting, another to quarrelling, or even fighting, and so
on, and the result is a lively splashing, confused performance, which is
amusing to see. It was an exhibition of this kind which I was so fortunate as
to witness at the Wolmer pond. The body-jerking antics and rich, varied
plumage of the drakes gave them a singular as well as a beautiful
appearance; and as they dashed and splashed about, sometimes not more
than fourteen yards from me, their motions were accompanied by all the
cries and calls they have—their loud call, which is a bright and lively
sound; chatterings and little, sharp, exclamatory notes; a long trill,
somewhat metallic or bell-like; and a sharp, nasal cry, rapidly reiterated
several times, like a laugh.

After they had worked off their excitement and finished their fun they
broke up into pairs and threes, and went off in various directions, and I saw
no more of them.

It was not until the sun had set that a snipe appeared. First one rose from
the marsh and began to play over it in the usual manner, then another rose
to keep him company, and finally a third. Most of the time they hovered
with their breasts towards me, and seen through my glass against the pale
luminous sky, their round, stout bodies, long bills, and short, rapidly
vibrating wings, gave them the appearance of gigantic insects rather than
birds.

Boys in the At length, tired of watching them, I stretched myself out

forest in the ling, but continued listening, and while thus occupied
an amusing incident occurred. A flock of eighteen mallards
rose up with a startled cry from the marsh at a distance, and after flying
once or twice round, dropped down again. Then the sound of crackling
branches and of voices talking became audible advancing round the marsh
towards me. It was the first human sound I had heard that day at that spot.
Then the sounds ceased, and after a couple of minutes of silence I glanced
round in the direction they had proceeded from, and beheld a curious sight.
Three boys, one about twelve years old, the others smaller, were grouped
together on the edge of the pool, gazing fixedly across the water at me.
They had taken me for a corpse, or an escaped criminal, or some such
dreadful object, lying there in the depth of the forest. The biggest boy had
dropped on to one knee among the rough heather, while the others, standing
on either side, were resting their hands on his shoulders. Seen thus, in their
loose, threadbare, grey clothes and caps, struck motionless, their white,
scared faces, parted lips, and wildly staring eyes turned to me, they were
like a group cut in stone. I laughed and waved my hand to them, whereupon
their faces relaxed, and they immediately dropped into natural attitudes.
Very soon they moved away among the trees, but after eight or ten minutes
they reappeared near me, and finally, from motives of curiosity, came
uninvited to my side. They proved to be very good specimens of the boy
naturalist; thorough little outlaws, with keen senses, and the passion for
wildness strong in them. They told me that when they went bird-nesting
they made a day of it, taking bread and cheese in their pockets, and not
returning till the evening. For an hour we talked in the fading light of day
on the wild creatures in the forest, until we could no longer endure the
cloud of gnats that had gathered round us.

About three years after the visit to Wolmer I made the acquaintance of a
native of Selborne, whose father had taken part as a lad in the famous
"Selborne mob," and who confirmed the story I had heard about the horn-
blower, whose name was Newland. He had been a soldier in his early
manhood before he returned to his native village and married the widow
who bore him so many children. It was quite true that he had died at home,
in bed, and what was more, he added, he was buried just between the
church porch and the yew, where he was all by himself. How he came to be
buried there he did not know.

Lately, in October 1902, I heard the finish of the story. I found an old
woman, a widow named Garnett, an elder sister of the woman at Wolmer
Forest. She is eighty years old, but was not born until a year or two after the
"Selborne mob" events, which fixes the date of that outbreak about the year
1820. She has a brother, now in a workhouse, about two years older than
herself, who was a babe in arms at that time. When Newland was at last
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