(Beech trees, woodruff)

Up to the beech woods on the hill. What a different aspect the woods presented from inside than from without! From outside, on this grey day, all had seemed in a motion of leaves and the hissing of the wind. But inside all was still; and as I wandered among the unadorned trunks of the old beech pollards, I was struck by a curious fancy. I fancied I walked in a great bare space like Gloucester cathedral, and these broad trees were its clutter of monuments to the dead.

Of course all was not still, the hiss of the leaves had continued, but was unheard in its constancy. It stayed unnoticed, that is, until a change in quickness and intent announced that rain had started to fall in the world outside. The hand of the rain grew stronger and pressed down on the wood; from the green storey above large drops of water fell to the wood’s dry floor, with its carpet of old leaves and fragments. These falling drops, transparent and flitting through the shadowed air, would have gone unseen had it not been for a peculiar effect ...

A drop of water, landing, struck a dry leaf.

Which twitched.

At first I mistook the motion for the impatient action of a concealed insect. But soon I noticed that the few square feet in front of me had become a kind of twitching animation, made by the drops of rain. Each drop seemed to mark the careful footfall of an invisible creature, (a man of perhaps twelve inches high), who stretched out a leg in a great stride to land his foot where the next drop had landed, and the next, and the next, and thus paced around on his small patch of ground.

To my surprise and wonder, I spotted my good friend Bisley walking at a short distance under the trees. I halloo-ed him and we continued on our way together. Bisley’s mind was full of some volumes of sixteenth century speculative philosophy he had been studying. Suddenly he bent down at the path’s edge and pointed out a delicate congregation of woodruff.

“How like an Elizabethan gentleman’s ruff that collar of green leaves is!” he exclaimed.

From the centre of the topmost ruff grew a narrow stem, like a thin wire, which divided horizontally at its terminus. Each branch then divided again into a cluster that held out the tiny round seeds. (It put me rather in mind of a mechanical model of the planetary system.)

“And how fitting a memorial this plant would make for an Elizabethan philosopher!” Bisley continued. “These seed stems could represent the revolving ideas of his philosophical system, growing, as it were, from out of his neck in the ruff.”

“And far larger,” I said, “than the head that thought them up, which is always the way with ideas.”

And happily agreed on this thought, we left the wood and walked out into the blustery weather.