The son of a social climbing father, this book describes two years in the life of Peter Hewett, when he was a small boy in the rural Hampshire of the 1920s. Against a backdrop of fluctuating family fortunes, he recalls a lost way of life and his discovery of natural history. This was a time when boys collected birds' eggs, butterflies and wild flowers with impunity and although such practices are no longer possible nor desirable it was this early obsession with collecting and classifying that led the author to cherish the countryside and to become one of its protectors.