42 ENGLISH WOODS : A CONTRAST. 



in the Catskills that for the grandeur of wildness and 

 savageness far surpass anything the Welsh moun* 

 tains have to show. Then for exquisite and thrilling 

 beauty, probably one of our mottled rocky walls with 

 the dicentra blooming from* little niches and shelves 

 in April, and the columbine thrusting out from seams 

 and crevices clusters of its orange bells in May, with 

 ferns and mosses clinging here and there, and the 

 woodbine tracing a delicate green line across its face, 

 cannot be matched anywhere in the world. 



Then, in our woods, apart from their treasures of 

 rocks, there is a certain beauty and purity unknown 

 in England, a certain delicacy and sweetness, and 

 charm of unsophisticated Nature, that are native to 

 our forests. 



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 mo- 

 ment. 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 wild wood 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, 

 aew animals, new insects, new sounds, new odors ; in. 



