"dp ipearson's Xane 



autumn, you fill your pockets with fruit if no one 

 is looking and eat as sour an apple as ever grew, 

 thinking it sweet. If in winter and the dry twigs 

 snap beneath your feet, you see at once the huge 

 fireplace with its back-log, andirons, tongs and 

 shovel, the crane and swinging-pot, and with every 

 twig that breaks you have the crackle and snapping 

 of the fire upon the hearth. 



But we came not to see one old apple-tree, but 

 the lane in which it stands, and we move on \ and 

 our steps are soon stayed, for here is another tree, 

 even larger, and beyond another and another. 

 We cannot pass them by. This one is hollow, and 

 half the branches are mere shells, that have given 

 shelter to owls and woodpeckers and are still the 

 summer homes of wrens and bluebirds, the great 

 crested flycatcher and the crested tit. If you 

 have a taste for natural history, every hollow tree 

 is a mine not likely to be worked out. This 

 second huge old apple-tree had never been ex- 

 plored ; and why did we come if not to fill out the 

 details of the grand discovery, that of the lane it- 

 self ? The woodpeckers are gone, but there may 

 be an owl, and yonder is the snake-skin dangling 

 from a hole, which means that a great-crest has 

 been nesting there. Looking for the possible lit- 

 tle red owl that is supposed to live in every hollow 

 tree, I thrust my hand into one of the cavernous 

 hollows. While feeling about its ridgy sides, 

 ,my fingers come in contact with a small disk that 

 185 



