ng birds by the
great frost; the caterpillars devoured the young leaves of the
plum-trees, so that whole orchards were completely stripped. The
balance between insectivorous birds and caterpillar life was destroyed
for a time, and the caterpillars conquered the plum-trees. In 1917,
during the persistent north-east blasts of February, March, and part
of April, the destruction of birds was terrible; all the tit tribe
suffered greatly, and the charming little golden-crested wren, which
here in the Forest was quite common, has scarcely been seen since.
Caterpillars again were a plague in my apple trees that spring, but
were not really destructive, and in the autumn the apples escaped
their usual punishment from the birds and wasps. Tits are often very
troublesome; they peck holes in the fruit, apparently in search of the
larvae of the codlin moth, leaving an opening for wasps and flies. I
find the berries of the laurel, which is a species of cherry, very
attractive to blackbirds, and as long as there are any left they seem
to prefer them to the apples. In 1895 cuckoos came to the rescue of my
young plum orchard; there were dozens of them at work on the nine
acres at once, and they must have cleared away an immense number of
the grubs.

The most remarkable season we have had since I left Aldington was the
great drought of 1911. There was no rain here worth mention from June
22, the Coronation of King George V., until August 30, and the
pastures on this thin land were burnt up. On August 30 we had some
friends for tennis, and we had not been playing long before a mighty
cloud-burst occurred; the rain fell in torrents. "It didn't stop to
rain, it tumbled down," as my men used to say, and in about half an
hour the lawn was a sheet of water, the ground being so hard, that it
could not soak away. It was all over in an hour, and a neighbour with
a rain-gauge registered 0.66 of an inch of rain, equal to 66 tons on
an acre, or 330 tons on my five acres.

One of my ambitions has always been to see a Will-o'-the-wisp, and I
am still hoping; but that hot summer, had I known it at the time, they
were quite common within an easy walk of my house in the New Forest.
There was some correspondence on the subject in _The Observer_, and
the following is extracted from one of the letters:

"As none of your correspondents seem to be aware of a comparatively
recent instance, I write to say that there were enough indubitable
Will-o'-the-wisps