The Arizona sentinel., 1886-12-11
WOOD-FEARS.
They Are Proofs That Nature Is
 Strange to Us.

Strange to Us.
 Unless we live in the country, tho woods play but small part in our lives We see them only in the summer holi. days, perhaps not even then; we become as strangers to their beauty, and for longer or shorter periods forget to think of them. And yet, aside from all phys ical consequences, what dreary world it would be were there no forests! Our thought would be parched and restless. and, so to speak, without eyeiids. The busiest and most persistently urban among us would lose an horizon restful to the eye, curtain of green and peaceful recollections.
 To the wild creatures who inhabit it, the wood is full of terrors. It is at once a covert and a snare, place of refuge and of lurking danger. The tree that shelters the small bird conceals the movements of his enemy, the owl, the squirrel, or the black snake; there is protection beneath the underbrush, but no certitude as to what lies on the other side of its leafage. Every thing in the wood appears to be in a perpetual state of watchfulness or of easily routed se- curity. The sparrow by the roadside will -Opt you for listener, if you keep within bounds of the auditorium; transgress them a little, and he meas ures off another dozen feet to the next post, and begins the concert afresh. The chipmunk, after his first start and scurry, pauses to eye the intruder before slipping into his hole, and the glance is often an assured one. But the wood bird and squirrel have no low curiosity and no desire to be seen; they are up and away at the first alarm. The only birds who are careless of new presence in the woods are the tiny warblers and hy-catching tribes, who live first floor below the stars and take small note of events Tn the rez-de-chaussee and the chickadee, who brings in from orchard and pasture fund of cheerful audacity to be paid out among the shadows.
 Do not we ourselves, on entering the wood, take on a certain increase of sus- ceptibility and alertness analogous to this deepened timidity and caution of the birds? Have we no wood-fear s? They may be definite and substantial or altogether vague, but l think that most of us have felt some quaver of this in- nate distrust, thisreadiness to take alarm in the forest. ''See his little breast heave," I once said, pointing out to a startled maiden chipmunk, who, in the furry of his own terror, had been the cause of hers. ''I don't wonder at it, " she replied, fervently. "Mine does" There are all degrees of this sensitive ness, according to the fineness or culti- vation of the imagination. There are people who suspect every unfamiliar leaf or berry of malicious intent to poison them, who will hardly pluck a flower without challenge, and are more wary of drinking at a mountain stream than of imbibing the filtered liquid which usurps the name of water in the city. And country people have more shrink ings and small superstitions, albeit of a homelier and more absolvable sort, than the most urban of excursionists. The children, on returning from day ber- rying, or ''plumming, as they quaintly call 1t in some parts, report of hearing bear in the forest border, and are half convinced that their escape to the sunlight has been a mar row one. Toads and snakes are not looked upon with more favor by those nearest to their haunts. What a vener- able cult is that fear of snakes. It is as old as the oldest religion; it is so widespread that we can almost call it universal, and has roots so deep that it is impossible to tell whether they are fastened in instinct or in tradition. The fact that it is shared by birds and other animals points to the former source; but if the feeling had not its rise in tradition, it has certainly been among the most potent factors in ere ating it The vivid emeralds and har- monious wood-tints of the snake, his patterned spots and stripes, his repro duction in almost every movement of Hogarth's line of beauty, win for him no admiration. Even his innocence is no shield to him; the world will not be brought to believe it. Take away his fangs and reduce him to puny size, the aversion he inspires is there all the same, illogical yet ineradicable.
 Thus it is with the majority of the sensations which I term wood-fears. Apart from all vulgar, tangible appre- hension of being bitten or stung, there exists host of tiny intangible fear lets, -" which tease our imaginations or turk unsuspected in the background of our consciousness. Alone in the forest, we listen and keep a lookout; there is a course to be shaped; we are alive to every whisper; we startle the partridge, and are startled by him in turn. An unexplained noise has everywhere an unfriendly sound, and under the trees noises do not so readily explain them selves as in the open country. The very screams and bellowings of the farm yard, familiar as they are, sound new and unaccou2table when heard at inter- vals across a wooded ridge or valley. Sometimes it is the creaking and sough- ing of the boughs; the treo-tops, on 2 windy day, give forth Vnearthly