MY COUNTRY STUDY 219 



time to think is the only corrective for the rush and stress of 

 practical life." 



As I enter the study, these weekly excerpts serve as my daily 

 supplication all through the year. May they never grow less ! 



Visitors to my hermitage, who are of a literary, or thinking, 

 turn of mind (and they mostly come under one, or both, of these 

 heads), remark upon the comprehensiveness of my little Library, 

 and, as I myself scan my shelves, I sometimes think, when sur- 

 rounded by so many treasured tomes on the entrancing subject 

 of Natural Science, of those boyhood days about which I have 

 already written at some length in my opening chapter. Then I 

 had no books to consult, none to aid, elucidate, or inspire ; now 

 the great difficulty is to pay due regard to the many authors 

 represented in the collection. 



This chapter must not savour too much of a Bookseller's or 

 Publisher's catalogue, but there are a few works to which I must 

 refer, so as to justify the title selected at the head of this section. 



To the late F. Edward Hulme's " Familiar Wild Flowers " 

 I owe a debt of gratitude I can never hope to repay, except as 

 a faithful disciple of the wildlings about which he wrote so charm- 

 ingly, and so faithfully pictured. John's " Flowers of the Field," 

 Hayward's " Botanists' Pocket Book," and " Illustrations of 

 the British Flora," drawn by W. H. Fitch and W. G. Smith, 

 have also proved of invaluable assistance in my Botanical studies, 

 whilst, when requiring (as one so often does) to know something 

 of the " secret of a weed's plain heart," I search for stimulus 

 among the precious pages of Hugh Macmillan's " The Poetry 

 of Plants," and am never disappointed. 



Read Macmillan on the beautiful symbol of self-sacrifice, 

 evidenced by the formation of a flower, brimful of scientific fact 

 imparted in the most delightful and suggestive poetic vein, and 

 be exceeding glad that, as Macmillian says, " Science has anointed 

 our blind eyes with its own magic eye-salve, and enabled us 

 indeed to see men as trees walking. We see our own human 

 nature reflected in the nature of the flowers of the field in a 

 previously unknown way. We see the analogue of the mother's 

 bosom in the milky substance of the two cotyledons of the seed 

 for the primary nourishing of the young embryo which they 

 contain. We see the lover's joy in the Spring blossoming of 

 the flowers, and the loveliness with which Nature adorns her 

 bridal bower. ... It is not perfect creation, complete at once, 

 that we see, but God sowing seeds, making things to grow by 



