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THE WAY OF THE WORLD.
THE WAY OF THE WORLD. BY A MEMBER.
NOT to everyone is it given to see Nature at her best, and to far fewer the sense to know the moment when it is thus presented to one's gaze. Who will doubt that the maiden greens of Spring, fresh and lovely with the dawning blush of Summer, can compete with the fĂźll and splendid panoply of August that is round us now ? But August, to be seen in her most resplendent robes, must not be sought upon the high brown moor, nor in the dustlined country hedgerows, where the green is so far fled or overlain as to have become unlovely. It is in the marsh and mere, the broad and widespread fen that August hues reign paramount. Here the grey-green willow leaves sparkle like jewels in the wind-brushed sunshine, the darker birch with silver stem throws shade athwart the rushes in the dykes, where their feathercrested heads nod gently to the fragrant meadow-sweet. A FEN ! you say. But no : no more a fen than one may see in any Suffolk village. Rather a vale between tall trees, majestic oak and spreading elm with here and there an ash, which shut the view on every side in such complete obscurity that one may think the clock of time put back to those far days when hedges were not known, and all let free to go and come where'er they list. HERE, now, the air is fĂźll of feathered songsters' murmurous voices, soft and low, not loud triumphant as in April's days, and tiny things of curious form alight upon your coat, causing one irrelevantly to wonder what they are for, these minute myriads of the insect world. Little we know; much is left to learn. Those cattle in the field will not grow robust while pestered by the stinging flies : this poor dead rabbit's smell will not for long pollute the air, for see the beetles already burying her : and yonder, where the stream glides by, the hungry moorhen feeds on water pabulum. Like Darwin's cats and bees, all Nature is connected and wondrously woven, link by link, upon herseif. The trout eats flies, we eat the trout. All are of use, did we but know the way of i t ; and, were it not for these least of things created, amongst which there is constant war, the perfect balance could not be maintained and the unfittest would survive, as artificial products have wrought in Man. YES : here around us, as we rest amidst the waving reed-heads, such warfare ceaselessly goes on, though to our mere human eyes are there but sunshine, stillness, peace.