Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P.
II.—WOODS AND FIELDS
"
URAL life," says Cicero, "is not delightful by reason of cornfields only and meadows, and vineyards and groves, but also for its gardens and orchards; for the feeding of cattle, the swarms of bees, and the variety of all kinds of flowers." Bacon considered that a garden is "the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks, and a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegancy men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection." No doubt "the pleasure which we take in a garden is one of the most innocent delights in human life."[1] Elsewhere there may be scattered flowers, or sheets of colour due to one or two species, but in gardens one glory follows another. Here are brought together all the
Quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears.[2]
We cannot, happily we need not try to, contrast or compare the beauty of gardens with that of woods and fields.
And yet, to the true lover of Nature, wild flowers have a charm which no garden can equal. Cultivated plants are but a living herbarium. They surpass, no doubt, the dried specimens of a museum; but, lovely as they are, they can be no more compared with the natural vegetation of our woods and fields, than the captives in the Zoological Gardens with the same wild species in their native forests and mountains.
Often, indeed, our woods and fields even rival gardens in the richness of colour. We have all seen meadows glorious with Narcissus and early purple Orchis, Cowslips, Buttercups, or Cuckoo flowers; cornfields blazing with poppies; woods carpeted with Bluebells, Anemones, Primroses and Forget-
- ↑ The Spectator.
- ↑ Milton.
