Autumn in The New Forest. The book aims to convey the pleasure found in wandering autumn hedges in all of their colour and form, with a spectacular index that lets you know where to find mentions ‘Stillness, Charm of’, ‘Gold of encrusting Lichen’, ‘Peaches, Tempting’ and our personal favourite, ‘The dying splendour of the sun.’

Francis George Heath (1843-1913) is the author of Tree Lore, Our Woodland Trees, Autumnal Leaves, Peasant Life and Fairy Plants. Heath was an enthusiastic lover of nature, and interested a large number of people in trees, plants and shrubbery through their poetic language and descriptions of the natural world. [Described here by 'The Nature Library']

From the text: A very considerable proportion of Hampshire is occupied by the Forest of Alice Holt and Woolmer, the Forest of Bere, and the New Forest.

The New Forest is particularly celebrated in history. Its present appellation has an evident reference to the alteration made in its extent by the Conqueror, but a more ancient name of this district was Itene, or Y Thene: it was also called Natanleod, from the British chieftain, who was here conquered by Cerdic, the founder of the West Saxon Monarchy.

The Mineral productions of Hampshire are but few, and those mostly confined to the cliffs on the sea coast, particularly in the neighbourhood of Lymington, Hordwell, and Christchurch.

C G Harper (1863 to 1943) 

From the arthor: This is a modest, gossipy and allusive sketch of a delightful part of England, designed rather to arouse the interest and the curiosity of those not already acquainted with what I will call the " Middle West " than to fully satisfy it.

The Wessex of which I shall treat in these pages is that Wessex of romance and of the great dairy-farms, which has been little touched by the influence of railways. Hampshire and Wiltshire, Winchester and Salisbury have become too closely in touch with London to stand so fully upon the ancient ways.

But in these rural territories the countryman still talks the old broad Do'set and Zummerzet speech, in which the letter "o" in every possible circumstance becomes "a" as you will perceive in that old rhyme beginning:

Wessex
A harnet zet in a holler tree,
A proper spiteful twoad was he.
And thus he zung as he did zet,
"My sting is as zharp as a bagginet."

Quoted by the author: This book is dedicated to my brothers and to to those who have been shore-shooting with me in Norfolik and elsewhere, and whose names in some cases appear in the text.

It is intended mainly for the edification of amateur collectors and shore-shooters.

Time was when the possession of a good collection of stuffed birds tended to distinguish a man as a Naturalist; today he is more likely to find himself regarded as a cold-blooded and heartless butcher......

Aurthor: Sidney Heath (b1872)
Artist: Ernest William Haslehurst (b1866)

From the arthor:The scenery which impresses most of us is certainly that in which Nature is seen in her wild and primitive condition, telling us of growth and decay, and of the land's submission to eternal laws unchecked by the hand of man.

Yet we also feel a certain pleasure in the contemplation of those scenes which combine natural beauty with human artifice, and attest to the ability with which architectural science has developed Nature's virtues and concealed natural disadvantages.