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FRESH FIELDS


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FRESH FIELDS

by

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




I

NATURE IN ENGLAND


I

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