a stranger therefore I engage him in conversation to find that one thing out." So we have discovered that even a lightly-esteemed ploughboy, familiar all his life with Nature in her many moods, at home in the fields and hedgerows, could tell us many things we did not know, which are common knowledge to him. A chat with an intelligent ploughboy, for such boys exist, may prove a profitable and interesting experience, for perchance it may be racy of the soil, full of the ways of wild birds and winged things, of the doings of hares, rabbits, weasels, foxes, and other animals belonging to the countryside, and of countless idle-growing things besides; above all, it is genuinely rural, and conveys an unmistakable flavour of the open air.
An intelligent rustic is unconsciously a close Nature-observer, and by listening to what he has got to say, if you can only get him to talk and keep him to his subject, you may make valuable use of the eyes of others who can see, but give small thought to what they see.
The works of White of Selborne and of Richard Jefferies have proved how attractive and refreshing to the town-tired brain are the faithful and simple record of the natural history of the English fields and woodlands, and the descriptions of the charms and beauties of the English country in all its varied aspects. One great value of such writings is that they induce people to search for, and teach them how to seek out, similar beauties for themselves in their everyday surroundings, that they never before so much as imagined to exist. So that truly a new,
