94 IN SILENT WOODS 



You step on a dead twig, and it gives out a per- 

 cussion like the snapping of a distant trigger. Scar- 

 let Tanager utters his clear call, apparently close 

 above your head. You seek but cannot see him, 

 for he may be either three or many rods away. 

 You grope about half a day for a desired flower, 

 and finally, sitting upon the moss to rest, in despair 

 of finding it, you discover that it surrounds you on 

 every side. In the woodlands one may always 

 expect the unexpected; and it usually happens. 



It would also seem that a peculiar temperament 

 in both animal and plant life is necessary to make 

 the isolation from society, sun, and air endurable; 

 for by woodlands I do not mean the woody fringes 

 that border meadows, spring up under the pro- 

 tection of highway fences, or thirstily follow the 

 edge of a river, but the forest as nearly prime- 

 val as we may find it in a heedlessly woodwast- 

 ing region, where legitimate felling of the ma- 

 ture tree for timber is too often followed by the 

 destruction of the sapling for cord -wood, and of 

 nearly all shrubby growths for kettle or pea -brush; 

 the untracked forest, where the red -tail and red- 

 shouldered hawks still nest, in company with a 

 pair or two of great horned owls, where the oven- 

 bird pitches its tent on a prairie of Ground Pine, 



