120 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



history of Selborne when his tortoise was away 

 over in Sussex ! 



A tortoise down by Sussex's brim 

 A Sussex tortoise was to him, 

 And it was nothing more — 



nothing at all for the "Natural History of Sel- 

 borne " until he had gone after it and brought it 

 home. 



Thus all nature-writers do with all their nature 

 in some manner or other, not necessarily by post- 

 chaise for eighty miles. It is characteristic of the 

 nature-writer, however, to bring home his out- 

 doors, to domesticate his nature, to relate it all to 

 himself. His is a dooryard universe, his earth a 

 flat little planet turning about a hop-pole in his 

 garden — a planet mapped by fields, ponds, and 

 cow-paths, and set in a circumfluent sea of neigh- 

 bor townships, beyond whose shores he neither 

 goes to church, nor works out his taxes on the 

 road, nor votes appropriations for the schools. 



He is limited to his parish because he writes 

 about only so much of the world as he lives in, 

 as touches him, as makes for him his home. He 

 may wander away, like Thoreau, to the Maine 

 woods, or down along the far-off shores of Cape 



