IS COUNTRY LIFE STILL POSSIBLE? 307 



autumn mornings the garden is perhaps dearer than 

 ever, when the squirrels are collecting nuts, and the 

 rooks, which have been stealing walnuts since dawn, 

 are cawing as contentedly as if they had gained their 

 breakfast honestly, and the late autumn flowers linger, 

 not as part of the chain of production, but as gracious 

 things in themselves, with nothing to offer us but their 

 beauty. 



The garden is ill-stocked which provides only flowers 

 and fruits. With due management, there is hardly 

 any limit to the birds and animals which will freely and 

 gladly haunt the lawns and shrubberies of a country 

 house. The modern Eden should be a home for 

 animals as well as plants, and the lawn their play- 

 ground. There is no reason why even the wilder 

 creatures should be banished to woods and plantations, 

 when, if not molested and encouraged, they will gladly 

 take sanctuary under the protection of man. October 

 sees the last of the flowers ; but the pleasure of the 

 garden may be continued, in a slightly different form, 

 even while the flowers sleep. Trees are only flowers of 

 a larger growth, and though the satisfaction gained by 

 planting trees is part of the "joy that cometh of under- 

 standing," the art of forestry is now well understood, 

 and is not difficult to learn. A wood, properly planted, 

 will in thirty years be worth the freehold of the land 

 on which it stands, and no monument to the ability 

 of a past resident is more durable and more honoured 

 in the memory of the country-side than that left by 

 woods and plantations of good and beautiful trees. 

 Jacob in Palestine dug a well, and left it to posterity. 



