20 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



water drawn out of a well, if it stands all night in 

 the air that is in the well, is more cold in the 

 morning than the rest of the water ? '' He could 

 probably have given many reasons why " a watched 

 pot never boils." The ancients, the same author 

 says, held that the bodies of those killed by light- 

 ning never putrefy ; that the sight of a ram quiets 

 an enraged elephant; that a viper will lie stock 

 still if touched by a beechen leaf; that a wild bull 

 grows tame if bound with the twigs of a fig-tree; 

 that a hen purifies herself with straw after she has 

 laid an egg; that the deer buries his cast-off horns; 

 that a goat stops the whole herd by holding a 

 branch of the sea-holly in his mouth, etc. They 

 sought to account for such things without stopping 

 to ask, Are they true? Nature was too novel, or 

 else too fearful, to them to be deliberately pursued 

 and hunted down. Their youthful joy in her, or 

 their dread and awe in her presence, may be better 

 than our scientific satisfaction, or cool wonder, or 

 our vague, mysterious sense of "something far more 

 deeply interfused;" yet we cannot change with 

 them if we would, and I, for one, would not if I 

 could. Science does not mar nature. The railroad, 

 Thoreau found, after all, to be about the wildest 

 road he knew of, and the telegraph wires the best 

 seolian harp out of doors. Study of nature deepens 

 the mystery and the charm because it removes the 

 horizon farther off. We cease to fear, perhaps, but 

 how can one cease to marvel and to love ? 



The fields and woods and waters about one are 



