ANIMAL LIFE 



CHAPTER I 



THE INTEREST OF ANIMAL LIFE 



The contrast in impressiveness between plant life and 

 animal life is a reflection that every countryside 

 arouses. By the plants we may know the wetness or 

 dryness of a district, its cultivation or wildness, the 

 run of the watercourses, the season of the year, and 

 even the time of day. In civilised countries, where 

 the scenery has been largely determined by man, the 

 national character finds expression, and shows in our 

 own country a generous capacity for half measures, 

 a toleration of opposites, a compromise between 

 formality and freedom, and controls in a charac- 

 teristic manner the growth of native plants and the 

 cultivation of alien ones. 



With the fields and heaths, the woodlands and 

 uplands, in all their varying expressions, genera- 

 tions of countryfolk have had close alliance. Be- 

 tween them and this ' furniture of the earth ' there 

 has grown a tie, the strength of which is not realised 



