Conseils aux chasseurs de viperes suivi de Un bois de pins pres de la mer

Description:

Text French. Translated from the English by Patrick Reumaux, 'Hints to adder-seekers' (from 'The Book of a Naturalist', 1919) and 'A Wood by the See' (from 'Adventures Among Birds, 1913). 'If the adder quest goes on for days, it is still best to preserve the mood, to think of adders all day, and when asleep to dream of them. The dreams, I have found, are of two sorts - pleasant and unpleasant. In the former we are the happy first finders of the loveliest and most singular serpents ever looked upon; in the second we unwittingly go up barefooted into a place from which we cannot escape, a vast flat region extending to the horizon, littered with adders. We have lifted a foot and don't know where to set it, for there is not one square foot of ground which is not already occupied by an adder coiled in readiness to strike'.

William Henry Hudson (1841-1922) was an Argentinean ornithologist, naturalist and writer, of British origin. He is a founding member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, in Great Britain, where he settled in 1869. It was his books on the English countryside which brought about a return-to-nature movement in the 1920s and 1930s and established his reputation in Europe.