134 WILD BIRDS 



is something that the naturalist knows in Nature 

 which was truth in the beginning when ' Jove rilled 

 all things with himself.' It cannot be called ' old ' 

 or ' new.' It is, under all mist and fog, so truly 

 that which is." The passage which Mrs. Chester- 

 man quotes from is in a chapter called, " The Green 

 World," in " Life and Sport of Hampshire." But 

 by " forefathers " I meant forefathers of the eight- 

 eenth century and the greater part of the nineteenth. 

 They had shed the old strange legendry of plants, 

 and taken instead an unimaginative view. A plant 

 to them was utterly mindless : they drew a hard and 

 fast line between plants and animals. Whereas 

 their forefathers went to the other extreme, human- 

 ising plants. I think that to-day we are on safer 

 and saner lines than the unimaginative eighteenth 

 century or the very imaginative ancients. The 

 ancients' view of plants reminds one somewhat of 

 Beardsley's drawings so bizarre, so beautiful. It 

 was a elfland of plants with them. 



THE CHEERFUL WAGTAIL 



The pied wagtail, I find, is a foul as well as fair 

 weather singer. Fine rain, driven sideways by a 

 wind that scarcely dropped its voice once the whole 

 morning, blotted out the landscape, and all was 

 drenched and cold and wretched-looking. Yet 

 the pied wagtails on the lawn of the old house were 

 full of spright, calling to their mates or companions 

 constantly and singing between ten o'clock and mid- 

 day. This lawn is one of the fair stretches of turf 



