WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. By Richard Jefferies.

(1879) 1925 John Murray reprint. 8vo (132 x 202mm). Ppxii,316. Green cloth, sportsman motif stamped in black to upper board, spine titled in gilt.

Jefferies' essays on natural history and 19th century country life wound around the course of a Downland chalkstream from its source in the hills to a lake in the valley. This book "first appeared in 1879 [and] consists of a series of papers reprinted from the Pall Mall Gazette, a periodical edited by the great Victorian journalist Frederick Greenwood, who afterwards conducted the St. James's Gazetter. The book was dedicated to Greenwood, who had been one of the first to recognize and encourage Jefferies' special talent". "There is a frontier line to civilisation in this country yet, and not far outside its great centres we come quickly even now on the borderland of nature". Lots and lots on birds, observations of the natural world, something on dogs and on shooting and much of interest on the inhabitants of the frontier and the world beyond it. With an introductory essay by Samuel J. Looker. Chapters include: The Downs; A drought; The hillside hedge; The village; Village architecture; The hamlet; The farmhouse; Birds of the farmhouse; The orchard; The wood-pile; The home-field; The ash copse; The warren; The rookery; Rooks returning to roost; Notes on birds; Notes on the year; Snake-lore; Course of the brook; Wildfowl of the lake.