on windy days.  It is so difficult to observe when you are thinking.  A man absorbed in reverie cannot see half the things that many country folk with less active brains never fail to observe.  When we find people who live in the country unversed in the ways of birds, the knowledge of flowers and trees, and the habits of the simple country folk, we need not necessarily conclude that they are dull and empty-headed; the reverse is often the case.  A man absorbed in business or serious affairs may love the country and yet know little of its real life.  A good deal of time must be spent in acquiring this kind of knowledge, and it is not everybody who has the time or the opportunity to do it.  If we come across a man with plenty of leisure, yet knowing nothing of what is going on around him, we may then perhaps have cause to complain of his dulness.

Mr. Aubrey De Vere relates an amusing story about Sir William Rowan Hamilton which exactly illustrates my meaning:  “When he had soared into a high region of speculative thought he took no note of objects close by.  A few days after our first meeting we walked together on a road, a part of which was overflowed by a river at its side.  Our theme was the transcendental philosophy, of which he was a great admirer.  I felt sure that he would not observe the flood, and made no remark on it.  We walked straight on till the water was half way up to our knees.  At last he exclaimed, ’What’s this?  We seem to be walking through a river.  Had we not better return to the dry land?’”

There is a spot in the woods by the River Coln that is almost untrodden by man.  It is the favourite resort of foxes.  Nobody but myself and the earth-stopper has been there for years and years, save that when the hounds come the huntsman rides through and cheers the pack.  It is in the conyger wood.  No path leads through its quiet recesses, where ash and elm and larch and spruce, mostly self-sown, are mingled together, with a thick growth of elder spread beneath them.  It was here, in an ancient, disused quarry, that the keeper pointed out not long since the secret dwelling-house of the kingfishers.  A small crevice in the limestone rock, from which a disagreeable smell of dried fish bones issued forth, formed the outer entrance to the nest.  One could not see the delicate structure itself, for it appeared to be several feet within the rock.  A mass of powdered fish bones and the pungent odour from within were all the outward signs of the inner nest.  By standing on a jutting ledge of the soft cretaceous rock, and holding on by another ledge, which appeared not unlikely to come down and crush you, one could peep into the hole and comfort oneself with the thought that one was nearer a kingfisher’s nest than is usually vouchsafed to mortal man.  It would be easy to get ladder and pickaxe and break open the rock until the nest was reached, but why disturb these lovely birds?  They have built here year by year for centuries; even now some of this year’s brood may be seen among the willows by the back brook.