TEJE NOONTIDE SILENCE. 157 



the stir of life about the quay, as a relief from the utter 

 Llauk, and feels oneself no loni^^er a bubble afloat on an 

 inflnity which knows one not, and cares nothing for one's 

 existence. For in the dead stillness of mid-day, when not 

 only the deer, and the agoutis, and the armadillos, but the 

 birds and insects likewise, are all asleep, the crack of a fall- 

 ing branch was all that struck my ear, as I tried in vain to 

 verify the truth of that beautiful passage of Humboldt's 

 true, doubtless, in other forests, or for ears more acute than 

 mine. " In the mid-day," he says,^' " the larger animals 

 seek shelter in tlie recesses of the forest, and the birds hide 

 themselves under the thick foliage of the trees, or in the 

 clefts of the rocks : but if, in this apparent entire stillness of 

 nature, one listens for the faintest tones which an attentive 

 ear can seize, there is perceived an all-pervading rustling 

 sound, a hummino- and flutterinc^ of insects close to the 

 ground, and in the lower strata of the atmosphere. Every- 

 thing announces a world of organic activity and life. In 

 every bush, in the cracked bark of the trees, in the earth 

 undermined by hymenopterous insects, life stirs audibly. 

 It is, as it were, one of the many voices of iSTature, and 

 can only be heard by the sensitive and reverent ear of her 

 true votaries." 



Be not too severe, great master. A man's ear may be 



^ " Aspects of Nature," vol. ii. p. 272. 



