—Wordsworth.
—Tusser.
THE WINDS AND THE WORLD'S WORK
That saying "idle as the winds" must have started in the days when they didn't know; for if ever there was a busy people, it's the Winds.
Not only do they help plant the trees of the forest, sow the fields with grass and flowers, and water them with rain, but they make and carry soil all over the world. And, like everything else in Nature, they have a sense of beauty and the picturesque. Rock, for example, weathered away into dust by the help of the winds, as it is, takes on all sorts of picturesque shapes. And, of course, the winds love music; everybody knows that. Before we get through with this chapter we're going to end a happy day outdoors with a grand musical festival in the forest, with light refreshments—spice-laden winds from the sea. There'll be nobody there but the trees and the winds and John Muir and us; all nice people.
I. Such Clouds of Dust!
March leads the procession of the dusty months because the warming up of the land, as the sun advances from the south, brings the colder and heavier winds down from the north. These winds seem to have a wrestling match with the southern winds and with each other, and among them they kick up a tremendous dust, because there's so much of it lying around loose; for the snows have gone, and the rainy season hasn't begun, and the fields are bare.
ABOUT THE DUST WE GET IN OUR EYES
Most people think these March winds a great nuisance because some of us dust grains are apt to get into their eyes; but dust in the eye is only the right thing in the wrong place. Just think of the amount of dust going about in March that doesn't get into your eye; and how nice and fine it is, and how mixed with all the magic stuff of different kinds of soil, thus brought together from everywhere.
An English writer on farming says he thinks the fact that English farms have done their work so well for so many centuries is due, in no small degree, to the March winds that have brought us world-travelled dust grains from other parts of the globe.