214 ARBOR DAY 



blackberries; and I know a youth who wonderingly 

 follows their languid stream, casting for trout. 



ENGLISH WOODS AND AMERICAN* 



BY JOHN BURROUGHS 



From Fresh Fields 



THE pastoral or field life of nature in England is 

 so rank and full, that no woods or forests that I was 

 able to find could hold their own against it for a 

 moment. It flooded them like a tide. The grass 

 grows luxuriantly in the thick woods, and where 

 the grass fails, the coarse bracken takes its place. 

 There was no wood spirit, no wildwood air. Our 

 forests shut their doors against the fields; they shut 

 out the strong light and the heat. Where the land 

 has been long cleared, the woods put out a screen 

 of low branches, or else a brushy growth starts up 

 along their borders that guards and protects their 

 privacy. Lift or part away these branches, and 

 step inside, and you are in another world; new plants, 

 new flowers, new birds, new animals, new insects, 

 new sounds, new odors; in fact, an entirely different 

 atmosphere and presence. Dry leaves cover the 

 ground, delicate ferns and mosses drape the rocks, 

 shy, delicate flowers gleam out here and there, the 

 slender brown wood-frog leaps nimbly away from 



*By permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 



