QUERCUS ALBA 



would have been brief, brief as the 

 lives of its predecessors season after 

 season were when they germinated 

 only to die again beneath the dead- 

 ly shade of the parent limbs. But 

 now, when the storm passed and 

 the warm sun shone anew, it was 

 to beat upon the forest floor for 

 the first time in generations, as 

 man reckons time. For at last the 

 mighty had fallen, victims of the 

 decrepitude of age and of their own 

 ponderous weight. Coeval, simi- 



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