The beeches and oaks become fewer as the ground rises, there are wide spaces of bracken and little woods or copses, every one of which is called a "shaw." Then come the firs, whose crowded spires, each touching each, succeed for miles, and cover the hill-side with a solid mass of green. They seem so close together, so thickened and matted, impenetrable to footsteps, like a mound of earth rather than woods, a solid block of wood; but there are ways that wind through and space between the taller trunks when you come near. The odour of firs is variable; sometimes it fills the air, some-times it is absent altogether, and doubtless depends upon certain conditions of the atmosphere. A very small pinch of the fresh shoot is pleasant to taste; these shoots, eaten constantly, were once considered to cure chest disease, and to this day science endeavours by various forms of inhalations from fir products to check that malady. Common rural experience, as with the cow-pox, has often laid the basis of medical treatment. Certain it is that it is extremely pleasant and grateful to breathe the sweet fragrance of the fir deep in the woods, listening to the soft caressing sound of the wind that passes high overhead. The willow-wren sings, but his voice and that of the wind seem to give emphasis to the holy and meditative silence. The mystery of nature and life hover about the columned temple of the forest. The secret is always behind a tree, as of old time it was always behind the pillar of the temple. Still higher, and as the firs cease, and shower and sunshine, wind and dew, can reach the ground unchecked, comes the tufted heath and branched heather of the moorland top. A thousand acres of purple heath sloping southwards to the sun, deep valleys of dark heather; further slopes beyond of purple, more valleys of heather-the heath shows more in the sunlight, and heather darkens the shadow of the hollows-and so on and on, mile after mile, till the heath-bells seem to end in the sunset. Round and beyond is the immense plain of the air - you feel how limitless the air is at this height, for there is nothing to measure it by. Past the weald lie the South Downs, but they form no boundary, the plain of the air goes over them to the sea and space.