Part 1

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Transcriber's note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (italics).

FRESH FIELDS

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FRESH FIELDS

JOHN BURROUGHS

Boston and New York Houghton, Mifflin and Company The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1896

Copyright, 1884, 1895, By John Burroughs.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

CONTENTS

PAGE I. NATURE IN ENGLAND 1

II. ENGLISH WOODS: A CONTRAST 35

III. IN CARLYLE'S COUNTRY 45

IV. A HUNT FOR THE NIGHTINGALE 77

V. ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SONG-BIRDS 113

VI. IMPRESSIONS OF SOME ENGLISH BIRDS 131

VII. IN WORDSWORTH'S COUNTRY 147

VIII. A GLANCE AT BRITISH WILD FLOWERS 159

IX. BRITISH FERTILITY 175

X. A SUNDAY IN CHEYNE ROW 199

XI. AT SEA 267

INDEX 277

FRESH FIELDS

NATURE IN ENGLAND

The first whiff we got of transatlantic nature was the peaty breath of the peasant chimneys of Ireland while we were yet many miles at sea. What a homelike, fireside smell it was! it seemed to make something long forgotten stir within one. One recognizes it as a characteristic Old World odor, it savors so of the soil and of a ripe and mellow antiquity. I know no other fuel that yields so agreeable a perfume as peat. Unless the Irishman in one has dwindled to a very small fraction, he will be pretty sure to dilate his nostrils and feel some dim awakening of memory on catching the scent of this ancestral fuel. The fat, unctuous peat,--the pith and marrow of ages of vegetable growth,--how typical it is of much that lies there before us in the elder world; of the slow ripenings and accumulations, of extinct life and forms, decayed civilizations, of ten thousand growths and achievements of the hand and soul of man, now reduced to their last modicum of fertilizing mould!

With the breath of the chimney there came presently the chimney swallow, and dropped much fatigued upon the deck of the steamer. It was a still more welcome and suggestive token,--the bird of Virgil and of Theocritus, acquainted with every cottage roof and chimney in Europe, and with the ruined abbeys and castle walls. Except its lighter-colored breast, it seemed identical with our barn swallow; its little black cap appeared pulled down over its eyes in the same manner, and its glossy steel-blue coat, its forked tail, its infantile feet, and its cheerful twitter were the same. But its habits are different; for in Europe this swallow builds in chimneys, and the bird that answers to our chimney swallow, or swift, builds in crevices in barns and houses.