86 ESSAY UPON REDWOOD. 



and intently looking, his keen and curious eye descries the 

 enemy ! Anon the tell-tale telephone sounds the alarm * * * 

 soon, too, he is gone the way of the distant and scarcely au- 

 dible answering echo of his mate. Anon, the leaves begin to 

 fall, and the early shadows to decline. Conscious of the low, 

 charioting, wind-waves as they begin to roll unwontedly along 

 the forest foliage, louder sounds from afar off, borne upon 

 the fragrant autumn breeze * * startle and begin to disturb 

 the long silence of his serene abode ; and in ways unnum- 

 bered and unknown to man, oft from his lone tree-top he 

 tells the sad tale of an approaching storm, cautions the trees, 

 and those to whom they correspond and represent, to beware! 

 Or, putting question or query more intelligently, as seen in 

 the light of right reason and due reflection and is it possible 

 to avoid the conclusion that storms also proceed in a trinal 

 order, from end, cause and effect conditions prior, posterior 

 to postreme first, middle, and last or in its own elemental 

 series from primates by intermediates to ultimates ? or with 

 any other dress your own idea of thought may choose to 

 clothe it hence physically prophetic tests of the Government 

 Signal Service, or Weather Bureau ! or those other finer and 

 purer telegraphic and telephonic animal nerves or excitive 

 vegetable fibres to become all astir preparatory ; or higher 

 still, gifted humanity ! May they not then, together one and 

 all, sense the coming storm? and in many cases not only feel, 

 but perceive, see and hear as we have heard the coming rain- 

 drops in the preceding wind if you please, hours, days, nay, 

 weeks before it came, dc facto. Now these aural with ethere- 

 al rarer and less rare to condensed watery material, are 



