4 AUTUMN AND WINTER 



would nest or hibernate. Insects are more easy than other 

 things to observe when we have once found their habitat. 

 They may be kept captive without any feeling that the joy 

 of natural liberty is sullied in any way ; and we may be sure 

 that they behave in captivity as in their proper haunt. We 

 can never tell this either of birds or quadrupeds. 



But the real countryman is not an entomologist or an 

 ornithologist, or aviculturalist, or even a zoologist. His 

 interest is not limited to anything within his horizon. It 

 extends to the horizon itself. His eyes are the microscope 

 and the telescope both. 



In his work the big and the little touch. Mysticism and 

 Science join hands. His parish is a full and wonderful 

 place, not narrow or parochial. Age cannot wither nor 

 custom stale the various booty of eyes and ears. The 

 tinkle of the thinnest ice echoes in his memory as clearly as 

 thunder overhead ; and the glow-worm pairs with the 

 lightning. One has lain prone some summer day on the 

 hilltop above the sea watching intently the struggle of a 

 little red ant in the grass roots, of which to him each is a 

 great rock of stumbling. Then, altering the focus of mind 

 and eye, gazed at the making of a cumulus cloud over the 

 unharvested sea. The blueness of the sky, the red of the 

 setting sun, have their clear causes as well as their 

 mysterious beauty. They speak prophecy as well as present 

 pleasure ; and the mind may be led from to-morrow to 

 eternity on the prompting of the western wind. 



How particular and wide the interest has grown may be 

 judged by a comparison of the novelists and poets of to-day 

 and yesterday. No doubt the most English of poets have 

 been precise enough always. Nothing can prevent Chaucer 

 remaining modern ; nor will countrymen ever forget to take 

 Shakespeare into their company. But with these exceptions 



