st sight he
had ever looked on. How big was it? I asked him; was it as big as an
ostrich? An ostrich, he said, was nothing to it; I might as well ask
him how it compared with a lapwing. He could give me no measurements:
it happened when he was a child; he had forgotten the exact size, but he
had seen it with his own eyes and he could see it now in his mind--the
biggest bird in the world. Very well, I said, if he could see it plainly
in his mind he could give some rough idea of the wing-spread--how
much would it measure from tip to tip? He said it was perhaps fifty
yards--perhaps a good deal more!

A similar trick was played by my mind about Stonehenge. As a child I had
stood in imagination before it, gazing up awestruck on those stupendous
stones or climbing and crawling like a small beetle on them. And what at
last did I see with my physical eyes? Walking over the downs, miscalled
a plain, anticipating something tremendous, I finally got away from the
woods at Amesbury and spied the thing I sought before me far away on
the slope of a green down, and stood still and then sat down in pure
astonishment. Was this Stonehenge--this cluster of poor little grey
stones, looking in the distance like a small flock of sheep or goats
grazing on that immense down! How incredibly insignificant it appeared
to me, dwarfed by its surroundings--woods and groves and farmhouses, and
by the vast extent of rolling down country visible at that point. It was
only when I had recovered from the first shock, when I had got to
the very place and stood among the stones, that I began to experience
something of the feeling appropriate to the occasion.

The feeling, however, must have been very slight, since it permitted
me to become interested in the appearance and actions of a few sparrows
inhabiting the temple. The common sparrow is parasitical on man,
consequently but rarely found at any distance from human habitations,
and it seemed a little strange to find them at home at Stonehenge on the
open plain. They were very active carrying up straws and feathers to the
crevices on the trioliths where the massive imposts rest on the upright
stones. I noticed the birds because of their bright appearance: they
were lighter coloured than any sparrows I have ever seen, and one cock
bird when flying to and fro in the sunlight looked almost white. I
formed the idea that this small colony of about a dozen birds had been
long established at that place, and that