214 BIRDS AND MAN 



animal. You have heard that this domain is the 

 property of some person, but it seems like a 

 fiction. The forest is nature's and yours. 

 There you are at liberty to ramble all day un- 

 challenged by any one ; to walk, and run to warm 

 yourself; to disturb a herd of red deer, or of 

 fallow deer, which are more numerous ; to 

 watch them standing still to gaze back at you, 

 then all with one impulse move rapidly away, 

 showing their painted tails, keeping a kind of 

 discipline, row behind row, moving over the 

 turf with that airy tripping or mincing gait that 

 strikes you as quaint and somewhat bird-Uke. 

 Or you may coil yourself up, adder-like, beside a 

 thick hawthorn bush, or at the roots of a giant 

 oak or beech, and enjoy the vernal warmth, 

 while outside of your shelter the wind blows 

 bleak and loud. 



To lie or sit thus for an hour at a time 

 hstening to the wind is an experience worth 

 going far to seek. It is very restorative. That 

 is a mysterious voice which the forest has : it 

 speaks to us, and somehow the life it expresses 

 seems nearer, more intimate, than that of the sea. 

 Doubtless because we are ourselves terrestrial 



