THE WOODS. 163 



of lizards, of snakes and ants at its roots, and with per- 

 haps a screech owl in a hollow limb. It will also have 

 been the life of fungi and of mosses, and the home of 

 many insects, and of old grubs and borers. A tree 

 which is at all old is a veritable mine for speculation. 

 And, when it dies, it is cut down, and gives warmth to 

 the farmhouse in the winter fire, after perhaps a hun- 

 dred years or more of useful existence to the living 

 world. 



I am reminded, in this connection, of a passage that 

 Thoreau has written, words that are among the most 

 beautiful in the literature of Nature, at the close of his 

 "Walden:" 



"Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds 

 of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came 

 out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which 

 had stood in a farmer's kitchen for sixty years, first in Con- 

 necticut, and afterwards in Massachusetts from an egg de- 

 posited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared 

 by counting the annual layers beyond it ; which was heard 

 gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat 

 of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and 

 immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows 

 what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for 

 ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead, 

 dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the 

 green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into 

 the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb heard perchance 

 gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, 

 as they sat round the festive board may unexpectedly come 

 forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled furni- 

 ture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!" 



