Between the Boldre and the Exe—Abuse of the New Forest—Character of the population—New Forest code and conscience—A radical change foreshadowed—Tenacity of the Forest fly—Oak woods of Beaulieu—Swallow and pike—Charm of Beaulieu—Instinctive love of open spaces—A fragrant heath—Nightjars—Snipe—Redshanks—Pewits—Cause of sympathy with animals—Grasshopper and spider—A rapacious fly—Melancholy moods—Evening on the heath—"World-strangeness"—Pixie mounds—Death and burial—The dead in the barrows—Their fear of the living.
A favourite New Forest haunt—Summertide—Young blackbird's call—Abundance of blackbirds and thrushes, and destruction of young—Starlings breeding—The good done by starlings—Perfume of the honeysuckle—Beauty of the hedge rose—Cult of the rose—Lesser whitethroat—His low song—Common and lesser whitethroat—In the woods—A sheet of bracken—Effect of broken surfaces—Roman mosaics at Silchester—Why mosaics give pleasure—Woodland birds—Sound of insect life—Abundance of flies—Sufferings of cattle—Dark Water—Biting and teasing flies—Feeding the fishes and fiddlers with flies.
The stag-beetle—Evening flight—Appearance on the wing—Seeking a mate—Stag and doe in a hedge—The plough-man and the beetle—A stag-beetle's fate—Concerning tenacity of life—Life appearances after death—A serpent's skin—A dead glow-worm's light—Little summer tragedies—A snaky spot—An adder's basking-place—Watching adders—The adder's senses—Adder's habits not well known—A pair of anxious pewits—A dead young pewit—Animals without knowledge of death—Removal of the dead by ants—Gould's observations on ants.
Cessation of song—Oak woods less silent than others—Mixed gatherings of birds in oak woods—Abundance of caterpillars—Rapacious insects—Wood ants—Alarm cries of woodland birds—Weasel and small birds—Fascination—Weasel and short-tailed vole—Account of Egyptian cats fascinated by fire—Rabbits and stoats—Mystery of fascination—Cases of pre-natal suggestion—Hampshire pigs fascinated by fire—Conjectures as to the origin of fascination—A dead squirrel—A squirrel's fatal leap—Fleas large and small—Shrew and fleas—Fleas in woods—The squirrel's disposition—Food-hiding habit in animals—Memory in squirrels and dogs—The lower kind of memory.
Insects in Britain—Meadow ants—The indoor view of insect life—Insects in visible nature—The humming-bird hawk-moth and the parson lepidopterist—Rarity of death's-head moth—Hawk-moth and meadow-pipit—Silver-washed fritillaries on bracken—Flight of the white admiral butterfly—Dragon-flies—Want of English names—A water-keeper on dragon-flies—Moses Harris—Why moths have English names—Origin of the dragon-fly's bad reputation—Cordulegaster annulatus—Calopteryx virgo—Dragon-flies congregated—Glow-worm—Firefly and glow-worm compared—Variability in light—The insect's attitude when shining—Supposed use of the light—Hornets—A long-remembered sting—The hornet local in England—A splendid insect—Insects on ivy blossoms in autumn.