The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn, by
William Henry Hudson

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Title: Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn

Author: William Henry Hudson

Release Date: November 1, 2006 [EBook #19691]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: DEAD MAN'S PLACK.]

DEAD MAN'S PLACK

AND

AN OLD THORN

BY W. H. HUDSON

1920
LONDON & TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

CONTENTS

DEAD MAN'S PLACK:

Preamble

Chapter

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

AN OLD THORN:

Chapter

I.

II.

III.

POSTSCRIPT

ILLUSTRATIONS

DEAD MAN'S PLACK

HAWTHORN AND IVY, NEAR THE GREAT RIDGE WOOD

DEAD MAN'S PLACK

PREAMBLE

"The insect tribes of human kind" is a mode of expression we are
familiar with in the poets, moralists and other superior persons, or
beings, who viewing mankind from their own vast elevation see us all
more or less of one size and very, very small. No doubt the comparison
dates back to early, probably Pliocene, times, when some one climbed to
the summit of a very tall cliff, and looking down and seeing his fellows
so diminished in size as to resemble insects, not so gross as beetles
perhaps but rather like emmets, he laughed in the way they laughed then
at the enormous difference between his stature and theirs. Hence the
time-honoured and serviceable metaphor.

Now with me, in this particular instance, it was all the other way
about--from insect to man--seeing that it was when occupied in watching
the small comedies and tragedies of the insect world on its stage that I
stumbled by chance upon a compelling reminder of one of the greatest
tragedies in England's history--greatest, that is to say, in its
consequences. And this is how it happened.

One summer day, prowling in an extensive oak wood, in Hampshire, known
as Harewood Forest, I discovered that it counted among its inha