INTRODUCTION 



air. Each in its way has a mission to fulfil, business to carry out, a 

 message to deliver, a duty to perform. 



Their beauty is not meant for sentiment nor display, but, as the late 

 Hugh Macmillan has so truly said, "for use in the economy of the plants 

 that produce it, so that they could not be spread over the earth, over those 

 desert places themselves, without that beauty." 



AN ENGLISH WOOD IN SPRINGTIME 



To be in an English wood in the early springtime, to observe the Hazel 

 catkins swinging like so many fairy bells on the leafless branches, is one of 

 the greatest delights which could come to any one interested in outdoor life. 

 The noting down systematically, season after season, of the first leafing of the 

 green canopy above, and the date of flowering, fruiting, and fall ; the arrival of 

 some favourite bird among the pliant branches ; the appearance of the first 

 brimstone or tortoiseshell butterfly ; the songs of newly awakened birds ; 

 the peeping from its woodland and leaf-strewn bed of the pale primrose ; 

 the hum of insects ; the frolics of wild folks, and generally the resurrection 

 of everything that lives out of doors and likes the sun, — all these tend to 

 make an April morning in the wild greenwood the very essence of quiet 

 and unobtrusive enjoyment, and result in a rich harvest to those possessing 

 the seeing eye. 



Here one may note and appreciate to the full the music of the feathered 

 choir, the murmur of the wind, the ripple of the leaves, the distant lullaby 

 of the sheep-bell, and receive with reverence the message of the trees. 



There is no doubt, as Richard Jefferies has said, that " if you wish your 



children to think deep things, to know the holiest emotions, take them to 



wood and hills, and give them the freedom of the meadows. Under the 



green spray, among the Hazel boughs, where the nightingale sings, they 



shall find a secret, a feeling, a sense that fills the heart with an emotion 



never to be forgotten." 



xxiv 



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