OUR COUNTRY TO-DAY 



raging and destructive torrents which here might be checked 

 and foamed over dead logs, whilst in another place they 

 cut out bare earth-escarpments or started new waterfalls 

 which ate back into the hills behind. 



At the summit of the higher hills, bare rock crags pro- 

 jected out of occasional alpine grassy slopes, or irregular 

 terraces, ravines, and gullies. Below, these alpine ravines 

 ended in a peat-moss, which scattered, dwarfed, distorted, 

 and miserable-looking Scotch Firs and Birches painfully 

 endeavoured to colonize. Here and there on very steep 

 hillsides, wiry, tussocky grass might be growing instead of 

 forest or peat. 



A horrible, forbidding, and desolate land, where Deer, 

 Irish elk, bison, bear, wolf, boar, wolverine, badger, and 

 fox, alone enjoyed themselves. 



Now consider our country to-day. Mark the " trim little 

 fields'"; "that hedge there must have been dipt about 

 eighty years ""; " The lifting day showed the stucco villas on 

 the green and the awful orderliness of England — line upon 

 line, wall upon wall, solid stone dock and monolithic pier."^ 

 The road, carefully macadamized, sweeps on correct and 

 straight or gracefully curving from neat village to country- 

 town. In the heart of the country the roadsides are scraped 

 bare to produce that hideous tidiness which is dear to the 

 soul of the County Council roadman. That is if an in- 

 dividual whose life is spent in stubbing up roses, briers, and 

 every visible wild flower, can possibly possess a soul ! Those 

 fields without a rock, or even a projecting stone, have been 

 drained, dug over, and levelled with the greatest possible 

 care. The very rivers have been straightened and em- 

 banked ; the rows of pollarded willows have been planted ; 



* Kipling. 

 K 145 



