172 LIFE OF A TREE. 
which the rain gushes violently after every shower 
of long continuance. The great branches which 
jut out from its sides, are full-grown trees in 
dimensions, and as thick as the united bodies 
of two or three men; and every here and there 
we may see a huge round stump all covered over 
with mould, and perhaps forming a little garden 
of itself, bringing forth divers kinds of weeds 
and grass high up in the air, where former 
branches grew, and were cut off by the woodman. 
The earth round about is all knotty and raised 
up into mimic hills by the great swollen roots 
beneath, some of which are, indeed, bare and 
exposed, and are polished with the gambols of 
children playing about them, and by the rubbing 
of the beasts of the field against them, when they 
come hither for shelter from the mid-day heats. 
A terrible and majestic object is that great old 
tree in the Winter time, particularly when it is 
seen in a snow-storm. Then to watch it at a 
distance,—to see the big, burly branches fight, 
with their hundred arms, with the whistling wind 
which pelts it and blinds it with a cloud of snow, 
—to see it stand without a quiver in its stalwart 
trunk, when every tree of the field bows submis- 
