With it he could stand and watch
the buck grazing in the glade, or a troop of fawns--sweet little
creatures--so demurely feeding down the grassy slope from the beeches.
Already at midsummer the nuts were full formed on the beeches; the green
figs, too, he remembered were on the old fig-tree trained against the
warm garden wall. The horse-chestnuts showed the little green knobs which
would soon enlarge and hang all prickly, like the spiked balls of a
holy-water sprinkle, such as was once used in the wars. Of old the folk,
having no books, watched every living thing, from the moss to the oak,
from the mouse to the deer; and all that we know now of animals and
plants is really founded upon their acute and patient observation. How
many years it took even to find out a good salad may be seen from ancient
writings, wherein half the plants about the hedges are recommended as
salad herbs: dire indeed would be our consternation if we had to eat
them. As the beech-nuts appear, and the horse-chestnuts enlarge, and the
fig swells, the apples turn red and become visible in the leafy branches
of the apple-trees. Like horses, deer are fond of apples, and in former
times, when deer-stealing was possible, they were often decoyed with
them.
There is no tree so much of the forest as the beech. On the verge of
woods the oaks are far apart, the ashes thin; the verge is like a
wilderness and scrubby, so that the forest does not seem to begin till
you have penetrated some distance.
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