CHAPTER XV 



In a Green Country in quest of Rare 

 Songsters 



I can understand the feeling experienced by some 

 visitors from far-distant sunburnt lands — our Anti- 

 podean " 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 land- 

 scape what it is to us are then intensified, or " illus- 

 trated by their contraries," as Defoe would have said. 

 Thus it was that, on coming south from the Peak 



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