THE COUNTRY LIFE. 217 



to them the sights and sounds of night, winter, 

 wind, storm, amid those dense boughs, were 

 simple occurrences whose origin, continuance, 

 and laws they foreknew. They had planted 

 together, and together they had felled ; to- 

 gether they had, with the run of the 

 years, mentally collected those remoter signs 

 and symbols which seen in few were of runic 

 obscurity, but all together made an alphabet. 

 From the light lashing of the twigs upon their 

 faces when brushing through them in the dark, 

 they could pronounce upon the species of the 

 tree whence they stretched ; from the quality 

 of the wind's murmur through a bough they 

 could in like manner name its sort afar off. 

 They knew by a glance at a trunk if its heart 

 were sound, or tainted with incipient decay ; 

 and by the state of its upper twigs the stratum 

 that had been reached by its roots. The arti- 

 fices of the seasons were seen by them from 

 the conjuror's own point of view, and not from 

 that of the spectator." 



There are not in the whole of the English- 

 speaking world, which now numbers close 



