evanescent aspects of cloud-land and tree-land, rock and undergrowth,
passing notes of bird and insect, varied melodies, if we may so express
it, of summer breeze and autumn wind--in fine, a dozen experiences
enjoyed one day, not repeated on the next. The music of the forest is a
quiet music and has to be listened for, hardly on the cyclist's ear
falls the song or rather accompaniment of the grasshopper, "the Muse of
the wayside," a French poet has so exquisitely apostrophized.

One's forest companion should be of a taciturn and contemplative turn.
Only thus can we drink in the sense of such solitude and immensity;
realizing to the full what indeed these words may mean, he may wander
for hours without encountering a soul, very few birds are heard by the
way, but the hum of the insect world, that dreamy go-between, hardly
silence, hardly to be called noise, keeps us perpetual company, and our
eyes must ever be open for beautiful little living things. Now a green
and gold lizard flashes across a bit of grey rock, now a dragon-fly
disports its sapphire wings amid the yellowing ferns or purple ling,
butterflies, white, blue, and black and orange, flit hither and thither,
whilst little beetles, blue as enamel beads, enliven the mossy
undergrowth.

One pre-eminent charm indeed of the Fontainebleau forest is this wealth
of undergrowth, bushes, brambles and ferns making a second lesser
thicket on all sides. In sociable moods delightful it is to go
a-blackberrying here. I am almost tempted to say that if you want to
realise the lusciousness of a hedgerow dessert you must cater for
yourself in these forty thousand acres of blackberry orchard.

But the foremost, the crowning excellence of Fontainebleau forest
consists in its variety. France itself, the "splendid hexagon," with its