14 
NATURE NOTES 
Of gardens, Chaucer has not much to say. Probably, from 
his house in Aldgate to John of Gaunt’s palace at the Savoy, he 
saw little else but trees and gardens. From the Savoy to West- 
minster was probably another stretch of green, only diversified 
by the beautiful cross in the little villiage of Charing, that 
marked King Edward’s grief for Queen Eleanor. Gardens 
and green all around — with blossoming bowers upon the river 
banks. There, too, were ponds that “ swommen full of small 
fishes light, with finnes rede and scales silver bright.” The 
animals that played about were those that we expect to see 
in a nobleman’s park. The “ dredeful * roe,” the “buck, the 
hart and hind, squirrels and beastes small of gentle kind.” His 
descriptions of landscapes are generalisations. While he scarcely 
misses the minutest points in the appearance of his fellow 
creatures, their background is faint and indistinct. In the fore- 
ground you see the atmosphere of Spring, the daisies, the small 
birds and animals. Beyond is but an “ emeraude ” blue, happy 
to the eye and suggestive of all the joys and pleasures that nature 
and the open air can give a man. But Chaucer spent the greater 
part of his life in the atmosphere of the Court, and his real 
sympathy was centred on the many types of people that he met. 
£)Ut in the eve of his life he sought the quiet of Nature. 
Under the shadow of the walls of Westminster Abbey, in the 
garden of the Lady Chapel, Chaucer found a home. The site of 
his humble house is now covered by Henry VI I. ’s beautiful 
Chapel. Five hundred years have passed since Chaucer died, 
but his work will never grow old. If, indeed, the human 
interest is the strongest, still we can surely admit that 
Chaucer did not neglect the humble flowers and those “ small 
beastes” which help so much to brighten our lives even in these 
latter years of the nineteenth century. 
Edith J. Durrant. 
REVIEWS AND EXCHANGES. 
Murderous Millinery. By Mrs. Edward Phillips. Humanitarian League's 
Publications, N.S., No. iv. 1901. Price id. 
This is a cogent statement, from the latest authorities, of those facts, too 
familiar, alas, to Selbornians, which require persistent iteration to force them on 
the unwilling ears of the guilty. 
The Animal Story-book Reader, from the Animal Story-book and the Red Book 
of Animal Stories. Edited by Andrew I.ang. Mith 77 Illustrations by 
Henry J. Ford and Lancelot Speed. Longmans. Price is. 4d. 
This well-printed, strongly bound and excellently illustrated reader contains 
fifteen stories from Mr. Lang’s deservedly popular collections, including bears, 
monkeys, dogs, frogs, elephants and kangaroos, several of them taken from 
Dumas. There are notes on the longer words, so that the whole forms a most 
attractive school-book, inculcating, moreover, wholesome lessons of humanity. 
It is sure to become a favourite in any school that adopts it. 
i.e., timid. 
