NATURE— AND MAN

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 56, 22 March 1937, Page 6

NATURE— AND MAN

Leo Fanning)

Consolation for Nature Lovers SPLENDID FAREWELL

(Edited by

Any reader who is not already a nature-lover will feel an urge to become one after perusal of this beautiful passage from "The Roadmender" of Michael Fairless — heart-haunting, soulstirring thoughts on the comfort whieh Nature holds for her lovers towards tho close of Iife on this marvellous earth : — "The garden is an epitome of peace; sun and wind, rain, flowers,*and birds gather in© into the blessedness of their active harmony. The world holds no wish for me, now that I have come home to die with my people, for verily I think that the sap of grass and trees must run in my veins, so steady is their pull upon my heart-strings. London claimed all my philosophy, but the country gives all?* and asks of me only th© warm receptivity of a child in its mother's arms. "When I lie jn my cool light room on the garden level, I look across the bright grass to a great red rose bush in lavish disarray - against the dark cypress. Near by, aniid a tangi© of many-hued cornflowers, I see the promise of coming lilies, the sudden crimson of a solitary paeony; and in lowlier state against the poor parched earth glow the golden cups of the eschcholtzias. Beyond the low hedge lies the pastur© bright with buttercups, where the cattle feed. Farther off, where the scythe has been. busy, the sheep, clean and shorn, with merry, well-grown lambsj and in the farthest fields I can see the great horses moving in slow, steady pace as the farmer turns his furrow. - . 1 "The birds are noisy comrades and old friends, from the lark which chants the dew-steeped morning, to- the nightingale that breaks the • silence of the most wonderful nights. I hear the wisdom of the rooks in the great elms j the lifting lilt of the linnet, and the robin's quaint little summer song. Th© starhngs chatter ceaselessly, their queer' strident voices harsk ' against the melodious gossip of the other birds j the martins shrill softly as they swoop to and fro, busied with their nesting under the eaves ; thrush and blackbird vie jn friendly rivalry like the Meistersinger of old ; sometimes I hear the drawling cry of. a peacock strayed from the great house, or the laugh of the woodpecker ; and at night the hunting note of the owl reaches me as he sweeps by in search of prey. "To-day I am out again; aud the great sycamore showers honey and fiowers on. me as I lie beneath it. Sometimes a bee falls like a over-ripe fruit, and "waits awhile to cleah. his polleri-coated legs ere he flies home to discharge his burden. He is too busy to be friendly, but his great velvety cousin is much more sociable, and stays for a gentie rub between his noisy skimmering wings, and a nap in the hollow of my hand, for he is . an idle friendly soul with plenty of time at his own disposal and no responsibilities. Looking across I can watch the martins at work; they have a starling and a sparrow for near neighbours in the wooden gutter. One nest is ^already, complete all but the coping; the other two are a-building: I wonder whether I or they will be first to go south tkrough the mist. "This great tree is a world in itself, and the denizens appear full of curiosity as to the Gulliver who has taken up his abode beneath it. Pale green caterpillars and spiders of all sizes come spinning down to visit me, and haye to be persuaded with infinite difficulty to ascend their threads again. There are flies with beautiful iridescent wings, beetles of all shapes, some of them like tiny jewels in the sunlight. Their nomenclature js a sealed book to me; of their life and habits I know uothing ; yet this is but a little corner of the cosmos I am leaving, and I feel not so much desire for the beauty to come as a great longing to open my eyes a little wider during the time which remains to me in this beautiful world of God's making, where each moment tells its own tale of active, progressive life in which there is no undoing. Nature knows naught of the web of Penelope, that acme of anxious pathetic waiting, but goes steadily on in ever widening circle towards tbe fulfilment of the mystery of God." Destruction Silence, gentie silence, save the sound Of birds, their ceaseless twitter And a stream half-laughing in the ground, And everywhere the bush, Th© green New Zealand bush. Giants, leafy giants, slender ferns, The smell of tree trunks rotting, And. the music where a tui learns To tuue his clever bell, His sweetly chimiug bell. Cliangea, many' changes, now have come, The years are ever passing, Time leaves the imprint of his tkumb, And man must bring his axe, His eager hunger axe. Burning, fiercely b.urning are the trees, Man's fire sweeps through the forest, The glades I knew he never sees, He goes his thoughtless way, His murd'rous, foolish way.

l'o-day, again I view the scene Uf little hills and valleys, Barren now, wliere once the bush had been In all its splendid green, Its unspoilt native green. Silence mournful silence haunts the place, And like some vast old graveyard, Gaunt tree trunks mark the only trace Of where there once was bush, The green New Zealand bush. — Rutb M. Mumfortk in "New Zealand Railways Magazine". Immense Antiquity of Birds "From the sparrows that chatter in our parks to the mocking-bird that has ' just flown beneath my study window, 1

birds seem s0 much a part of presentday life that it js difficult to realise the long ancestry and the vast reach of geologic time that lie behiud these feathered beings," writes a contributor to Bird-Lore (American). "Human descents, from the Pilgrims of tlie Mayflower, from twelftb century English forbears, of even from the primitive men of Neanderthal times, are as nothing compared to a group of creaturea whose family lines in many cases run back with little change into the dim reaches of the Wiocene period six million or more years ago, and whose earliest representatives date from the Jurassic age with an antiqnity of one hundred and twenty-five million years. Modern man and all his ancestors, whatever these may bave been, are mere upstarts compared to such an ancient lineage."