f to describe the word
_pastern_ in his dictionary as the _knee_ of a horse. "Ignorance,
madam, pure ignorance," was his laconic reply. So great a man could well
afford to confess utter ignorance of matters outside his own sphere. But
how few of mankind are ever willing to own themselves mistaken about any
subject under the sun, unless it be bimetallism or some equally
unfashionable and abstruse (though not unimportant) problem of the day!

What beautiful shades of colour are noticeable in the trees in the early
part of May! The ash, being so much later than the other trees, remains
a pale light green, and shows up against the dark green chestnuts and
the still darker firs. But what shall I say of the great spreading
walnut whose branches hang right across the stream in our garden in the
Cotswold Valley?

About the middle of May the walnut leaves resemble nothing so much as a
mass of Virginia creeper when it is at its best in September. Beautiful,
transparent leaves of gold, intermingled with red, glisten in the warm
May sunshine,--the russet beauties of autumn combined with the fresh,
bright loveliness of early spring!

Not till the very end of May will this walnut tree be in full leaf. He
is the latest of all the trees. The young, tender leaves scent almost as
sweetly as the verbena in the greenhouse. It is curious that ash trees,
when they are close to a river, hang their branches down towards the
water like the "weeping willows." Is this connected, I wonder, with the
strange attraction water has for certain kinds of wood, by which the
water-finder, armed with a hazel wand, is able to divine the presence
of _aqua pura_ hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth? What
this strange art of rhabdomancy is I know not, but the "weeping" ash in
our garden by the Coln is one of the most beautiful and shapely trees I
ever saw. It will be an evil day when some cruel hurricane hurls it to
the ground. We have lost many a fine tree in recent years, some through
gales, but others, alas I by the hand of man.

A few years ago I discovered a spot about a quarter of a mile from my
home which reminded me of the beautiful Eton playing-fields,

"Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain."

It consisted of a few grass fields shut off by high hedges, and
completely encircled by a number of fine elm trees of great age and
lovely foliage. At one end a broad and shallow reach of the Coln
completed