IX 



An Alarming Interlude 



Whether it is that flowers are not enough — as 

 they certainly are not — or whether it is that there 

 is an instinct left in us traceable back to the 

 patriarch Noah, who so loved the beasts that he 

 had to have them with him on board ship, I do 

 not know : but give a normal healthy being a 

 piece of land, and very soon he (or she) will set 

 about peopling it with animals. Most novices will 

 begin with a dovecot, as I did. . . . That is to 

 invite tragedy and cats, and it is no consolation to 

 know that the life of the cat is fortified by the 

 lives of the doves. . . . Pigeons are even more 

 disastrous, for, as like as not, they will hatch an 

 egg and then shake off their parental responsi- 

 bility by flying away to return no more. 



Nine out of ten dovecots of my acquaintance 

 are empty. I have known people who have " gone 

 back to the land," and have been so infected with 

 Nature's frenzy for propagation that all their days 

 are given to setting birds and beasts and plants 



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