128 
NATURE NOTES. 
gather it from his verse, and it would be interesting to any 
student to work out the indications in detail. 
We look again through his e)’es at the distant landscape, 
and the same fact is apparent. He shows us little detail save 
what is quite close and had impressed itself upon him by con- 
stant repetition, as — 
The seven elms, the poplars four 
That stand beside my father's door ; 
but he gives broad effects of light, masses of colour, which do 
not depend on any special power of vision if the}' are A'isible at 
all. The hills are always “purple,” the sk}' “golden,” or “rosy 
bright;” the moon is “dim red,” and we see “scarlet shafts of 
sunrise.” The series of pictures in “The Palace of Art” are all 
great sweeps of colour: — “ One seemed all dark and red, a tract 
of sound,” “ Realms of upland, prodigal in oil, and hoary to the 
wind,” and the like. There is no middle distance, or if there be 
it is picked out by specks of colour : “ The red cloaks of mar- 
ket girls,” “ or long-haired page in crimson clad.” If the poet 
notices a lady’s work, it is when she adds “a crimson to the 
quaint macaw.” 
But we have said enough. Our aim is not to analyse Lord 
Tennyson’s nature notes, but to lead others to do so. There 
is no better way of studying a poet than to take one subject, and 
trace it through all Iris writings. To ask ourselves how Tenny- 
son looks on the outward rvorld, and what he can teach us of the 
birds, the sky, the sea, the flowers, will be, when we can ansAver 
the question, no bad fragment of a liberal education. 
C. Kegax Paul. 
SOMETHING ABOUT ROOKS. 
CORRESPONDENT asks Avhether it is usual for 
rooks to bury their food. I may say that Ave haA-e had 
three rooks coming about this place for the last fiA-e or 
six 3'ears, and these habitually bury their food. The}- 
are perhaps as tame as rooks can be. They first began to come 
during one of those hard and seA'ere Avinters Avhich haA-e been of 
late years. The snoAv lay some three or four feet deep in the 
neighbourhood of these hills about Delaniere Forest. It Avas 
interesting to see hoAv they made their first approaches. First 
one appeared, and, alighting upon the ridge of a stack Avithin 
thirty yards of the house door, surA'eyed AA'ith great caution the 
doings and whereabouts of the inmates. The same being a quiet 
famih* — and a gun neA-er used about the place — the cautious 
bird appeared AA'ell satisfied AA'ith his scrutiny, and soon invited 
another rook, Avhich Ave took to be the AA'ife, to bear him com- 
