THE ART in which Richard Jefferies excelled is called in German “Tonkunst.” It has been so little practiced among English writers that there is no English name for it except “word painting,” which is inadequate. It is the art of describing natural objects and of presenting ideas in symphonies and harmonies of tone. It need not be said that while poetry depends upon it for all its forms of expression, it belongs to prose only when it is employed by a master great enough in his art, not to sacrifice sense to sound or sound to sense. No recent writer has illustrated the possibilities of this art better than Jefferies has done in his descriptions of nature.

  He was born in Wiltshire, England, November 6th, 1848. His love of nature and the keenness of his vision for the infinite art it manifests appeared in his work from the first, but “Wild Life in a Southern Country,” which appeared in 1879, is the first of his important nature studies. He wrote novels and tales, which were received with some favor, but the sketches of life in the woods and fields which he continued to write until his death (August 14th, 1887) give him his claim to enduring reputation. As an observer of nature, he is en titled to be classed with John Burroughs in America.