WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 87 



Deep down in the psychology of peoples lies the 

 corresponding primordial instinct of the waning 

 day. How dying men have begged to have their 

 faces raised to the setting sun. How we have built 

 our houses open towards the west, intolerant of the 

 depressing shadows between us and the sinking 

 day. How the towns and cities of European 

 peoples have, where possible, grown as by a natural 

 law towards the lighted west. How it has been the 

 west-end which has become in consequence the 

 residence of wealth and fashion. Beneath the 

 face of history the same sub-conscious instinct has 

 moved to results massive and enduring. How the 

 individuals and races, emotional, adventurous, 

 sanguine, have ever turned their backs on the east 

 and followed the sun. In these western lands which 

 leaned at last against the impassable ocean they 

 could get no further, and the successive waves of 

 the warring peoples, pent together, were heaped 

 one upon each other till they have become what they 

 have become in history, and we search downward 

 now through their records as through geological 

 strata. And how when the ocean itself was con- 

 quered at last the flood of peoples with accumulated 

 impulse burst once more westward over the virgin 

 continent of the New World ! 



Down the valley comes the little local train, 

 shaking the bog like an earthquake. The feeding 

 water-rail in the deep rhine by the side scarcely 

 lifts her head. The sitting lapwing still covers her 

 nest undisturbed. From over the open comes the 

 laughing note of the green woodpecker in the little 

 farm orchard carpeted with flowers which nestles 

 by the hills. Further, far distant down the valley, 



