This is no country where every patch of wood among the
meadows gibes up an increase of song, and every valley wandered
through by a streamlet rings and reverberates from side to with a
profusion of clear notes. And this rarity of birds is not to be
regretted on its own account only. For the insects prosper in their
absence, and become as one of the plagues of Egypt. Ants swarm in
the hot sand; mosquitos drone their nasal drone; wherever the sun
finds a hole in the roof of the forest, you see a myriad transparent
creatures coming and going in the shaft of light; and even between-
whiles, even where there is no incursion of sun-rays into the dark
arcade of the wood, you are conscious of a continual drift of
insects, an ebb and flow of infinitesimal living things between the
trees. Nor are insects the only evil creatures that haunt the
forest. For you may plump into a cave among the rocks, and find
yourself face to face with a wild boar, or see a crooked viper
slither across the road.
Perhaps you may set yourself down in the bay between two spreading
beech-roots with a book on your lap, and be awakened all of a sudden
by a friend: 'I say, just keep where you are, will you? You make
the jolliest motive.
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