At Home with Wild Nature 



66 there is no music in Nature." This may be so, for as 

 I possess no scientific knowledge of what music really 

 is, my ignorance forbids me to contradict. All I can 

 say is, that if the gentleman will leave me the serene 

 loveliness of the woodlark's song and the divine notes 

 of the nightingale, he is quite welcome to all his 

 masters, old and new, and there will be no quarrel 

 between us. My ideal of all that is sweet and lovable 

 here and hereafter is the song of a happy bird. 



One day I stopped to listen to a particularly accom- 

 plished throstle pouring out the emotions of his 

 soul from the topmost branch of an ash tree in my 

 neighbourhood. Presently an aged, toil-stained navvy 

 drew up beside me, and leaning on a fence looked up 

 and listened. In a moment the unmistakable traces of 

 hardship passed from his wrinkled face like cloud 

 shadows from a sunlit mountain-side, and turning, he 

 said : " Ain't he a gem, guv'ner ? It's worth walkin' a 

 long way to 'ear 'im." And so it was. 



The grasshopper warbler sings by night as well as 

 by day, and many times have I sat alone in the stern 

 of an old eel-boat on the Norfolk Broads listening to 

 his shrill, long-sustained grasshopper-like notes, whilst 

 the stars were reflected in the dark and oppressively 

 still waters around me. Whether this bird sings from 

 any coign of vantage, such as the topmost spray of a 

 bush during the night, I cannot say, but there I have 

 detected him at the first peep of day with his wee throat 

 vibrating, whilst he turned his head from side to side 

 in a perfect ecstasy of delight. 



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