I pick up one of those pebbles and throw it—well, just in yonder among the whins; where the stone has alighted a wild old fox has a den, and she has cubs too in spring-time; so I am not the only wild creature that frequents these solitudes. Oh no; for apart from the birds, who all know me, and do pretty much as they please, there are mice and moles in the grass, and high aloft orange-brown squirrels that leap from tree to tree, besides rabbits in dozens that scurry around the hillocks and play at hide-and-seek. At this very moment up on yonder bank sits a hare; his ears are very much pricked, and he is looking towards me, but as he is chewing something, in a reflective kind of way, he cannot be very much alarmed. And only last evening I saw a large hedgehog trotting across my glade, dragging behind him a long green snake, a proof, methinks, that innocent hoggie is fond of something more solid than black beetles and juicy slugs as a change of diet.

With the exception of an occasional keeper, wandering in pursuit of game, no human being ever disturbs the sanctity of my woodland study; and no sound falls on my ears, except the distant roar of a passing train, the song of linnets, and croodle of turtle-dove and cushat.

Sometimes, in blackberry season, far down in yonder copse, I can hear the laughing voices of children at work among the brambles. Just under a furze-bush, not five yards from the spot where I am now reclining, a pheasant some time ago brought forth a brood of young. She never used to move when I went close to her, only looked up in my face, as much as to say, “I don’t think you are likely to disturb me, but I mean to stick to my nest whatever happens.”

There is something new to be seen and studied in this woodland haunt of mine all the year through. What a wondrous volume is this book of Nature! I honestly declare that if I thought I had any chance of living for, say a couple of thousands of years, I would go in for the study of natural history in downright earnest, and at the end of even that time, I daresay, I should feel just as ignorant as I do now.

But I don’t come to my woodland study to laze, be assured; a good deal of honest work is done in this sylvan retreat, as many a London editor can testify. Only, there are half-hours on some days when a drowsy, dreamy sensation steals over me, and I pitch my pen away and lie on the moss and chew the white ends of rushes, and think.

It is, say, a beautiful day in mid-July. There are wondrous clouds up yonder, piled mass on mass, with rifts of bright blue between, through which the sun shines whenever he gets a chance. There is a strip of sunshine, even now, glittering on those feathery seedling grasses, and varnishing them as it were. It is gone, and a deal of beauty goes with it.

It is close and sultry and silent, and with half-shut eyes I take to studying the liliputians that alight with fairy feet on my manuscript, or creep and crawl across it.

Here is a gnat—the Culm communis—a vast deal too communis in these wilds, especially at eventide, but my hands have long ago been rendered proof against their bites à la Pasteur. This is a new-born culex; he hardly knows what the world is all about yet. But how fragile his limbs, how delicate his wings! These last are apt to get out of order, a breath of wind may do damage, a raindrop were fatal. This gnat has lost a leg, but that does not seem to interfere in the least degree with his enjoyment of life. He is a philosopher, five legs are fun enough; so away he flies.

Here are some small spiders—crimson ones. There are other tiny ones, too tiny yet to build a web, so they stalk for wee unwary flies.

Here comes a great mother spider, quite a Jumbo among the others; she walks quickly across the sheet, but, strange to say, half a dozen pin-head young ones are clinging to her, and now and then she drops one, and it quite unconcernedly goes to work to make its own living. Fancy human parents getting rid of their offspring in this way! No such luck, many will add.