TREES, THE TITMOUSE AND THE WOODPECKER. 507 



Guiana) invites those lovely creatures to a choice repast. Are you 

 anxious to procure the pompadour, the purple-breasted and the 

 purple-throated cotingas? Then, mark the time when the wild 

 guava tree ripens its fruit ; and on it you will find these brilliant 

 ornaments of the forest. Is the toucan your object? You have 

 only to place yourself, before the close of day, at the shaded 

 root of some towering mora, whose topmost branches have been 

 dried by age, or blasted by the thunderstorm, and to this tree 

 the bird will come, and make the surrounding wilds re-echo to its 

 evening call. Would you inspect the nest of the carrion crow? 

 Brittle are the living branches of the ash and sycamore ; while, on 

 the contrary, those which are dead on the Scotch pine, are tough, and 

 will support your weight. The arms of the oak may safely be relied 

 on ; but, I pray you, trust with extreme caution those of the quick- 

 growing alder. Neither press heavily on the linden tree; though 

 you may ascend the beech and the elm, without any fear of danger. 

 But let us stop here for the present. On some future day, should I 

 be in a right frame for it, I may pen down a few remarks, which 

 will possibly be useful to the naturalist when roving in quest of 

 ornithological knowledge. I will now confine myself to the mis- 

 fortunes and diseases of trees ; and I will show, that neither the 

 titmouse nor the woodpecker ever bore into the hard and live 

 wood. 



Trees, in general, are exposed to decay by two different processes, 

 independent of old age. The first is that of a broken branch, which, 

 when neglected, or hot cut off close to the parent stem, will, in the 

 course of time, bring utter ruin on the tree. The new wood, which 

 is annually formed, cannot grow over the jutting and fractured part, 

 into which the rain enters, and gradually eats deeper and deeper, 

 till at last it reaches the trunk itself. There it makes sad havoc ; 

 and the tree, no longer able to resist the fury of the tempest, is split 

 asunder, and falls in ponderous ruins. But ere it comes to this, the 

 titmouse will enter the cavity in a dry spring, and rear its young 

 ones here. Now, if the diseased or fractured branches were carefully 

 cut off close to the bole, you would see the new accession of wood 

 gradually rolling over the flat surface, which, in time, would be 

 entirely covered by it : and then the tree would be freed for ever 



