AUTUMN FLOWERS, SQUIRRELS. 249 



side highway wliich passes through the North country 

 without its chipmunlv ? Perhaps tlie zigzag rail fence 

 may enjoy tlie exclusive reputation of being a dis- 

 tinctly American institution, but the green-gray stone 

 wall, with its bittersweet, squirrel, and woodchuck, I 

 consider no less a product of American soil. The 

 like of it we will not see in the old country. 



Italy is full of glaring, plastered, forbidding walls 

 and barren, walled-in roads with never a touch of 

 rural life or interest for passing travelers.* The 

 country is worn out with the poverty of its inhab- 

 itants, and exhausted of every green thing that ought 

 to grow on the wayside. 



We do not appreciate our native land, with its 

 wealth of green plants and its multitude of trees, 

 nor do we realize the boundless life and liberty of 

 our fields and woods and open roads. The ferns, 

 golden-rods, asters, and gentians which grow by the 

 wayside, the birds and squirrels which scamper over 

 the fence rails, the woodchuck who burrows beneath 

 the stone wall, the pretty green snake which winds 

 sinuously among the grassy borders, the tree cricket, 

 and the piping hyla — these all testify to an abundance 

 of wild life which is unknown in the old country. 



* I might add also that they lack bucolic interest, but for the 

 fact that Italian shepherds do exist ! 



