The Forest - A Strange Thing For An Englishman - Is Very Destitute Of
Birds.
This is no country where every patch of wood among the
meadows gibes up an increase of song, and every valley wandered
through by a streamlet rings and reverberates from side to with a
profusion of clear notes.
And this rarity of birds is not to be
regretted on its own account only. For the insects prosper in
their absence, and become as one of the plagues of Egypt. Ants
swarm in the hot sand; mosquitos drone their nasal drone; wherever
the sun finds a hole in the roof of the forest, you see a myriad
transparent creatures coming and going in the shaft of light; and
even between-whiles, even where there is no incursion of sun-rays
into the dark arcade of the wood, you are conscious of a continual
drift of insects, an ebb and flow of infinitesimal living things
between the trees. Nor are insects the only evil creatures that
haunt the forest. For you may plump into a cave among the rocks,
and find yourself face to face with a wild boar, or see a crooked
viper slither across the road.
Perhaps you may set yourself down in the bay between two spreading
beech-roots with a book on your lap, and be awakened all of a
sudden by a friend: 'I say, just keep where you are, will you?
You make the jolliest motive.' And you reply: 'Well, I don't
mind, if I may smoke.' And thereafter the hours go idly by.
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