April 2 + 

I was glad yesterday to see the egg season so well in. I shall have to get blowpipes and egg drills. Spring has really arrived and even the grasshoppers are beginning to stridulate, yet Burke describes these little creatures as being “loud and troublesome” and the chirp unpleasant. Like Samuel Johnson, he must have preferred brick walls to green hedges. Many people go for a walk and yet are unable to admire Nature simply because their power of observation is untrained. Of course some are not suited to the study at all and do not trouble themselves about it. In that case they should not talk of what they do not understand.⁠ ⁠… I might have noticed that I have used the term “Study of Nature.” But it cannot be called a study. It is a pastime of sheer delight, with naught but beautiful dreams and lovely thoughts, where we are urged forward by the fact that we are in God’s world which He made for us to be our comfort in time of trouble.⁠ ⁠… Language cannot express the joy and happy forgetfulness during a ramble in the country. I do not mean that all the ins and outs and exact knowledge of a naturalist are necessary to produce such delight, but merely the common objects⁠—Sun, Thrush, Grasshopper, Primrose, and Dew. + 