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 to convince the most incredulous during the
extremely hot weather of July, 1911.

"From July 18 to 22 I was at Thorney Hill in the New Forest, some
seven miles behind Christchurch. Owing to the abnormal drought the
bogs and bog-streams at the foot of the hill westward were all but
dry; a dense mist, however, sometimes rose from them at night. On July