BY INLAND WATERS 121 



drooping willows, bending as the earth waves 

 deflect it into the mystery of the concealed land- 

 scape. No small part of such charm, surely, is in 

 the bird and animal life, the snapper plopping from 

 a log, the darting wraith of a pickerel in the weeds, 

 the bittern's boom, the spotted sandpipers tipping 

 a salute as they show off their speckled shirt-fronts 

 on the little beach, the waiting kingfisher overhead, 

 the heron sailing with slow wing-beats down the 

 river aisle. When we lose them how much is lost ! 

 To save them, or what few of them we can save, is 

 worth all it has cost, and will cost, for increasingly 

 as the days go on man will need to turn from his 

 own perplexities to the solace of the natural world, 

 in all its fullness and all its multiple beauty. 



