Berkshire ©limpses. 71 



getic than themselves. Their tactics are those of the 

 savage ; they overcome by craft or else by sheer force 

 of numbers. And any farmer will tell you whether 

 they are fighters or not. Look how the common 

 daisy has forced its way stubbornly into the fields of 

 this continent. One has only to look afield to see 

 how in the farmer's territory as well as in that of the 

 sociologist eternal industry is the price of civilisation. 



I do not say that such reflections as these added 

 their gravitation to our steps as we clambered toward 

 the woods which tangle the ledges of Jug End ; but 

 the text was there, whatever became of the sermon. 

 Nor was it long before we encountered a new applic- 

 ation of it in the dense thicket which covered the 

 steep and rocky mountainside. Here, too, nature 

 was getting even with her despoiler and sending in 

 legions of sturdy warriors to recapture the lands she 

 lost in the extermination of the hemlock and the pine. 

 Scrub-oak, maple, moosewood, hobble-bush, and 

 blueberry, — they were all here, the hardy Cossacks of 

 the forest and the hillside, throwing themselves reck- 

 lessly into the fight against the usurper, man, and 

 holding possession of these strategic points until 

 the reserves shall come up, the slow-moving ever- 

 greens, the sylvan infantry. And there they will hold 

 their ground if need be for ten thousand years. 



But it did not take a long nor a particularly hard 

 clamber to pierce this natural abatis and reach the 

 crest of the ridge which juts out into the level 

 meadows of Egremont. Once there the wide pro- 



