LOVERS OF NATURE 217 



it, or when science does it, it recreates the 

 M^orld for us, and for the moment we are again 

 Adam in paradise. 



Herein lies one compensation to the lover of 

 nature who is an enforced dweller in the town : 

 the indifference which familiarity breeds is not 

 his. His weekly or monthly sallies into the 

 country yield him a rare delight. To his fresh, 

 eager senses the charm of novelty is over all. 

 Country people look with a kind of pitying 

 amusement upon the delight of their newly ar- 

 rived city friends; but would we not, after all, 

 give something if we could exchange eyes with 

 them for a little wliile ? 



We who write about nature pick out, I sus- 

 pect, only the rare moments when we have had 

 glimpses of her, and make much of them. Our 

 lives are dull, and our minds crusted over with 

 rubbish like those of other people. Then 

 writing about nature, as about most other sub- 

 jects, is an expansive process; we are under the 

 law of evolution; we grow the germ into the 

 tree; a little original observation goes a good 

 ways. Life is a compendium. The record in 

 our minds and hearts is in shorthand. When 

 M^e come to write it out, we are surprised at its 

 length and significance. What we feel in a 

 twinkling it takes a long time to tell to another. 

 When I pass along by a meadow in June, 

 where the bobolinks are singing and the daisies 

 dancing in the wind, and the scent of the clover 

 is in the air, and where the boys and girls are 

 looking for wild strawberries in the grass, I 



