from the slow creeping on of the dawn of a summer morning at home, to the music of the thrushes answering one another's full rich notes from neighbouring thorn-trees. Suddenly a yellow light spreads upwards in the east, the stars quickly fade, and the dark fringes of the forest and the tall palms show out black against the yellow sky, and almost before one has time to observe the change the sun has risen straight and fierce, and the whole landscape is bathed in the full light of day. But the morning is yet for another hour cool and fresh, and the scene is indescribably beautiful. The woods, so absolutely silent and still before, break at once into noise and movement. Flocks of toucans flutter and scream on the tops of the highest forest trees, hopelessly out of shot; the ear is pierced by the strange wild screeches of a little band of macaws which fly past you like the wrapped-up ghosts of the birds on some gaudy old brocade."[1]
In our own country, though woodlands are perhaps on the increase, true forest scenery is gradually disappearing. This is, I suppose, unavoidable, but it is a matter of regret. Forests have so many charms of their own. They give delightful impressions of space and of abundance.
The extravagance is sublime. Trees, as Jefferies says, "throw away handfuls of flowers; but in the meadows the careless, spendthrift ways of grass and flower and all things are not to be expressed. Seeds by the hundred million float with absolute indifference on the air. The oak has a hundred thousand more leaves than necessary, and never hides a single acorn. Nothing utilitarian—everything on a scale of splendid waste. Such noble, broadcast, open-armed waste is delicious to behold. Never was there such a lying proverb as 'Enough is as good as a feast.' Give me the feast, give me squandered millions of seeds, luxurious carpets of petals, green mountains of oak-leaves. The greater the waste, the greater the enjoyment—the nearer the approach to real life."
"By the shores of the Swiss lakes."
Nowhere is woodland scenery more beautiful than where it passes gradually into the open country. The separate trees, having more room both for their roots and branches, are finer, and can be better seen, while when they are close together "one cannot see the wood for the trees." The vistas which open out are full of mystery and of promise, and tempt us gradually out into the green fields.
What pleasant memories these very words recall, games in the hay as children, and sunny summer days throughout life.
- ↑ Thomson's "Voyage of the Challenger."
