The Open Air 



and the surface is exquisitely clean. The colours are 

 not really bright, at least not separately; but they 

 are so clean and so clear that they give an impression 

 of warmth and brightness. Even in the excitement 

 of sport regret cannot but be felt at the sight of those 

 few drops of blood about the mouth which indicate 

 that all this beautiful workmanship must now cease 

 to be. Had he escaped the sportsman would not 

 have been displeased. 



The black bud-sheaths of the ash may furnish a 

 comparison for his ear-tips; the brown brake in 

 October might give one hue for his fur; the yellow or 

 buff bryony leaf perhaps another; the clematis is not 

 whiter than the white part. His colours, as those of so 

 many of our native wild creatures, appear selected 

 from the woods, as if they had been gathered and 

 skilfully mingled together. They can be traced or 

 paralleled in the trees, the bushes, grasses, or flowers, 

 as if extracted from them by a secret alchemy. In 

 the plumage of the partridge there are tints that may 

 be compared with the brown corn, the brown ripe 

 grains rubbed from the ear ; it is in the corn-fields that 

 the partridge delights. There the young brood are 

 sheltered, there they feed and grow plump. The red 

 tips of other feathers are reflections of the red sorrel 

 of the meadows. The grey fur of the rabbit resembles 

 the grey ash hue of the underwood in which he hides. 



A common plant in moist places, the figwort, bears 

 small velvety flowers, much the colour of the red 

 velvet topknot of the goldfinch, the yellow on whose 

 wings is like the yellow bloom of the furze which 

 he frequents in the winter, perching cleverly on its 

 prickly extremities. In the woods, in the bark of the 

 trees, the varied shades of the branches as their size 

 diminishes, the adhering lichens, the stems of the 



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