New York: Harper & Row, (1969) dj. Hardcover first edition - The second (and final) book by this reclusive naturalist, author of the prize-winning "The Peregrine." Each chapters describes events by the month - from April to September - but in varied landscapes - the meadows, moors, woods and waterways of southern England. The prose, beautiful in its quietness, captures one instantly - it begins "The hill slopes steeply down through the green woodland mist, the uncertain haze of spring. The air above seems slowly to descend. A footpath gleams and dwindles between plantations of dense fir, dark reluctant trees in sombre strata, where poplars faintly shine. The pale coppery-yellow poplar leaves are still uncurling. Under the soft grey of the early morning clouds, they shine with their own perpetual sunlight." but death is never far away - "a brown stain in the path ahead becomes a dead long-eared bat.. . The tender parchment wings of its membraned hands have crumpled, shriveled up like burnt paper." Scarce in the first edition, and especially so in this condition. 159 pp.