Xll 



Foreword 



so does one field or wood or hedgerow differ from 

 another. This chronicling is not meant to be 

 universal. It applies to a Southern countryside 

 lying westward of the Alleghanies and eastward 

 of the Mississippi, nearly midway between the 

 mountains and the river. 



The chronicling has been a labor of love 

 for were not the fields, the woods, the creeks, 

 friendly comrades of the chronicler? Partly 

 because of delight in them, partly also because they 

 make up what seems to be, in outdoor literature, 

 an Unknown Country, she has written of them 

 at some length, but always veritably, with no 

 greater ambition than to give the feel of outdoors, 

 and the life of outdoors, as known to herself. 



