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The Farmer's Wife
THE QUEEN BEE AND OTHER NATURE STORIES
TRANSLATED FROM
THE · DANISH · OF
CARL EWALD
BY
G·C·MOORE SMITH
THOMAS NELSON & SONS
LONDON · EDINBURGH · DUBLIN
AND NEW YORK · 1908 · · ·
PREFACE.
BY THE TRANSLATOR.
Carl Ewald's "Æventyr" or Nature Stories are well known and verypopular in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia, though they have neverbefore this been brought to the notice of English readers. There are anumber of series of them, the first of which consists of the storiesgiven in this little book.
This first series appeared in 1882, but took its definitive form inthe edition of 1895. When it first appeared, it was introduced by apreface written by the author's father, the well-known historicalnovelist, H. F. Ewald. This preface ran as follows:—
"It has often been a subject of complaint that our story books, withtheir nixies, trolls, and bewitched princes and princesses, givechildren superstitious ideas, and affect their imagination in a waywhich is not the best possible.
"The author of the little stories to which I am writing a word ofpreface has struck out a way of his own. Holding that Nature, withits manifold and many-coloured life, contains new material on whichchildren in their own way can draw, he has taken as the subject of hisstories the phenomena of natural history.
"As I think, he has performed his task in a taking and attractivemanner, the child's fancy being sufficiently enthralled at the sametime that it gets a true conception of the working of natural forces,a conception which will fix itself in the memory all the better forits poetical clothing.
"It seems to me that the author's view is a sound one, so I gladlyrecommend his little book to parents who wish their children to readwhat is both pleasurable and instructive."
There are some touches in the stories, of course, which belong ratherto Denmark than England—for example, the custom of ringing the churchbells at sunset, the complete disappearance of starlings in the wintermonths, the "starlings' box" which is ready for them to rest in ontheir return, the presence of the stork. The phenomenon of beechforests extruding and supplanting oak forests (referred to by Dr.Wallace in "Darwinism" as one of the most striking instances of"natural selection") is one of wh