THE STACKYARD POPULATION 



399 



A haystack, however, has small virtue, as compared with 

 a wheat or oat stack, for farmer or naturalist. It may house 

 a few rabbits underneath, if it has been set on logs, and 

 some birds may roost in its eaves of a chilly night, but there 

 is an end. A cornstack is full of surprises from the blue 

 shadows, which the impressionists quite rightly painted to it, 

 to the astounding families of animals which inhabit its interior 



'WELL-CLIPPED GEOMETRIC STACKS 



among the ears, so carefully hidden from common view. 

 The time to visit a stackyard is at night, if you dare, for it 

 is a strange and exciting place, more strange in its excite- 

 ment than any wood. We all have felt a sort of fear or 

 nervous tension on entering a deep wood at midnight, as if 

 you might disturb things and be punished for your sacrilege. 

 George Meredith, in a great naturalist's poem, has put the 

 sensation into fit words : 



1 Enter these enchanted woods 

 You who dare. 



Up the pine where sits the star 

 Rattles deep the moth-winged jar. 

 Each has business of his own ; 

 But should you distrust a tone, 

 Then beware. 



