would assign any age to a badger-earth or to a peregrine falcon’s eyrie unless he knew it to be recent? And, to descend to more precise matters, a stag’s shed horns of last year are a document, if not human, at any rate cervine, from which he who runs may sometimes read much. Mr. Williamson is always on the watch for such documents as these, and he knows how to interpret them.
But it is not he who runs but rather he who remains still that is the best observer of wild creatures; and it is easy to see that Mr. Williamson has waited immovable through long hours of darkness and of daylight, of fair weather and foul, with eyes, weary it may be, but always alert and vigilant. And he has studied the ways not of one wild creature but of many, and thus has been able to understand, in some measure, the relations of the different creatures to each other. Nor is he less attentive to their environment, for he is familiar with wild plants and wild flowers as with wild animals; and I will venture to guess that nothing that passes within range of his vision remains unnoticed. He may be watching two otters at play, but, if there be a grass-snake on the opposite bank, a patch of butterfly orchis peeping through a gap in the fence, and two carrion-crows mobbing a buzzard overhead, he will surely mark one and all of them.
Of knowledge and observation, then, he has a rich treasure to pour down before us, and he has, moreover, the imagination that not only further enriches but also beautifies it. Finally he has the literary skill to present to us his wares in a most attractive form. If anything, his artistic
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