36 THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE 



Hard scales on the Dogwood buds are starting and 

 yielding reluctantly to the swelling pressure. The 

 enfolded vegetation that lay dormant through the 

 winter is awakening to life and throwing aside its 

 manifold coverings. A thousand closely and com- 

 pactly wrapped cones of leaves are forcing their 

 way upward to the moist air, cracking and bursting 

 the unyielding earth and pushing all obstructions 

 out of their way. These myriad perforations can 

 scarcely be made without an audible disturbance, 

 especially in the spring, when even deliberate 

 growth is impelled to haste by the spirit of renewing 

 life. The sound of growth cannot be entirely a 

 delusion. Growth itself may be absolutely silent. But 

 the slow crowding aside of myriads of obstructions, 

 the perforation and disturbance of last year's leaves, 

 the cracking and opening of hardened bark, with 

 the enlarging layers of new vegetation, the bursting 

 of inelastic scales and husks — all these unite in a 

 blended rustle of reviving life, through which the 

 faintest squeak of the Brown Creeper or the twitter 

 of a Kinglet comes clear and distinct. Listen 1 



