owl, the clatter of the goatsucker, or the weird barking of the foxes:
for not two hundred yards from the house and practically in the garden,
is a fox earth that has never been without a litter of, cubs for
forty years!

In an ivy-covered house in the stable-yard I saw a very large number of
foxes' noses nailed to boards of wood--as Sir Roger de Coverley used to
nail them. They appeared to have been slain by one Dick Turpin, huntsman
to the Vale of White Horse hounds, some thirty or forty years ago, when
a quondam master of those hounds lived in this old place.

What a charm there is in an old-fashioned English garden! The great tall
hollyhocks and phlox, the bright orange marigolds and large purple
poppies. The beds and borders crammed with cloves and many-coloured
asters, the sweet blue of the cornflower, and the little lobelias.
Zinneas, too, of all colours; dahlias, tall stalks of anenome japonica,
and such tangled masses of stocks! As I walked down by the old garden
wall, whereon lots of roses hung their dainty heads, I thought I had
never seen grass so green and fresh looking, except in certain parts
of Ireland.

But the wild flowers by the silent river pleased me best of all. Such a
medley of graceful, fragrant meadow-sweet, and tall, rough-leaved
willow-herbs with their lovely pink flowers. Light blue scorpion-grasses
and forget-me-nots were there too, not only among the sword-flags and
the tall fescue-grasses by the bank, but little islands of them dotted
about a over the brook. Thyme-scented water-mint, with lilac-tinted
spikes and downy stalks, was almost lost amongst the taller wild flowers
and the "segs" that fringed the brook-side.