PREPARATORY ^\ ALK INTO TPIE COUNTRY. 7 



How beautiful those green woods of beech and Hnie, inter- 

 mingled with stately pines, elms, and sycamores ! The lilac 

 with its lovely thyrsi, the bird-cherry with its white racemes, 

 the laburnum profuse of pendulous yellow flowers, decorate the 

 thickets. On the banks and in the shade of the woods are an 

 hundred species of plants, the examination of which affords 

 delight to that botanist, who, with trowel in hand, and three 

 tin boxes slung to his person, rummages among the tangled 

 roots. The blue hyacinth, the broad-leaved garlick, the pur- 

 ple-spiked orchis, the wild strawberry, the goldilock ranuncu- 

 lus, the creeping bugle, the whorled woodrufl', the delicate 

 oxalis, the granulated saxifrage, and many more are seen 

 around us. But see, flitting from the tree to the rock, are two 

 small birds, which from their peculiar cry of chacJc, chacJc, we 

 know to be Grey Flycatchers. They represent our Excur- 

 soREs, not inaptly, as you observe, for one of them has sprung 

 into the air, seized an insect, and returned to the pinnacle on 

 which it had perched. 



V/ith the exception of the Woodpeckers, we have thus met 

 with representatives of all our larger groups of land birds, un- 

 less we consider the Cuckoo as meriting a place for itself and 

 its companions. As yet not a single bird has occurred of those 

 which will form the subjects of my fourth and fifth volumes, 

 namely the Wading and Swimming Tribes. But now we 

 leave the shade of those beautiful woods, and enter on an open 

 moor, partly covered with furze and heath. Were w^e to extend 

 our walk, we should meet with the Lapwing, the Curlew, and 

 the Snipe ; but to observe the Swimmers, we should have to 

 betake oursalves to the shores of the distant estuary, whose 

 blue waters, and projecting headlands, form so conspicuously 

 beautiful a portion of the extensive landscape presented to our 

 view. 



Let us seat ourselves on this mossy knoll, inhale the pure 

 air, and gaze upon the blue hills that skirt the horizon, the 

 extended plains, the green woods, and the brown moors. It is 

 a beautiful, nay, a happy world, although filled with sin and 

 sorrow. How lovely then must be that in which grief has no 

 place, — in which the purified soul lives in the eternal sunshine 



