122 HEDGES., WINDBREAKS, SHELTERS, ETC. 



of the word before you will be a good horticul- 

 turist. You will be something- of a poet, and 

 have a fullness of natural piety as well as careful 

 scholarship. 



Lewes, in his "Studies of Animal Life and 

 Vegetable Life," says : "Come with me and lovingly 

 study nature, as she breathes, palpitates and works 

 under myriad forms of life forms unseen, unsus- 

 pected, or unheeded by the mass of ordinary men. 

 Our course may be through park and meadow, gar- 

 den and land, over the swelling hills and spacious 

 heaths, beside the running and sequestered streams, 

 along the tawny coasts, out on the dark and danger- 

 ous reefs, or under dripping caves and slippery 

 ledges. It matters little where we go; everywhere 

 in the air above, the earth beneath and waters 

 under the earth we are surrounded with life. Our 

 studies will be of life. Nature lives; every pore is 

 bursting with life; every death is only a new birth, 

 every grave a cradle. Around us, above us, beneath 

 us, the great mystic drama of creation is being 

 enacted, and we will not even consent to be 

 spectators. The life that stirs within us stirs in all 

 else. We are all parts of one transcendant whole. 



"The scales fall from our eyes when we think 

 of this; it is as if a new sense had been vouchsafed 

 to us, and we learn to look at nature with a more 

 intimate and personal love. If the sequestered cool- 

 ness of the wood tempt us to saunter into its check- 

 ered shade we are saluted by the murmurous din 

 of insects, the twitter of birds, the scrambling of 

 squirrels, the startled rush of unseen beasts, all tell- 

 ing how populous is this seeming solitude. We 



