THE FAERY YEAR 



Gabriel Oak could find on his great sky-dial no 

 second, even minute, hand. On the other side 

 there is a real loss in habit of observation and 

 memory. 



The Music of March 



One time of the singing birds is the dusk of 

 some wild March dawn. In spite of tradition, the 

 missel thrush is not the only or the chief specia- 

 list of the storm. True, he sings loud and bold 

 through the gale, though he also revels in the mild, 

 brilliant mornings of winter and early spring. But 

 the song thrush in March and April is also a storm 

 thrush. A little after five o'clock in the morning 

 of mid-March the song thrushes and blackbirds 

 begin. At first come fragmentary snatches ; 

 presently, all the thrushes are wide awake before 

 six o'clock, the air flooded with their rapturous 

 songs. There is little to choose between the 

 matins and the evensong of thrushes and black- 

 birds, but I am sure that it is not through a 

 subjective feeling in us that these birds' songs 

 seem finer in the mysterious hours of dusk than 

 during the familiar daylight. It may be argued 

 that these hours appeal to our aesthetic sentiment, 

 and that we imagine them as appealing also to the 

 bird. But people with no particular feeling for 

 dawn or dusk have only carefully to listen and 

 contrast bird songs at different times in the day to 

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