CHAPTER XV 



IN A GREEN COUNTRY IN QUEST OF RARE 

 SONGSTERS 



Green England — An imagined journey to the stars — The silent 

 bicycle — Encounters with blind men — Rambles in Dorset 

 — Wareham — Story of a good little boy — A surprising 

 experience at Poole — The threshold of Hampshire. 



I CAN understand the feeling experienced by some 

 visitors from far-distant sunburnt lands — our 

 antipodean " dependencies," for example — on 

 first coming to England, at a time of year when the 

 country is greenest. The unimagined brilliancy of 

 the hue and its universality affect them powerfully; 

 for though green was known to them in sea and sky 

 and earth and in a parrot's plumage, it is not really 

 the colour of nature in their world as in ours. It is a 

 surprise to all and in some a pure delight, but to 

 others it appears unnatural, and it is degraded by 

 its association in the mind with fresh green paint. 

 But to those who live in England, especially in the 

 southern parts, this verdure is never more delightful 

 and refreshing to the soul than when we come to it 

 straight from some such hilly and moorland district 

 as, say, that of the Peak of Derbyshire, with its brown 

 harsh desolate aspect. All the qualities which go to 

 make our southern landscape what it is to us are then 

 intensified, or "illustrated by their contraries," as 



Defoe would have said. 



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