THE CHRISTIAN NATURALIST. 185 



hear every thing, a beauty that will be observed. The 

 stump of an old oak is a very landscape, with rugged 

 Alpine steeps bursting through forests of verdant mas- 

 ses, with some pale, denuded, branchless lichen, like a 

 scattered oak, creeping up the sides or crowning the 

 summit. Rambling with unfettered grace, the ten- 

 drils of the briony festoon with its brilliant berries, 

 green, yellow, red, the slender sprigs of the hazel, or 

 the thorn ; it ornaments their plainness, and receives a 

 support its own feebleness denies. The agaric, with 

 all its hues, it shades, its elegant variety of forms, 

 expands its cone, sprinkled with the freshness of the 

 morning, a transient fair, a child of decay, " that sprang 

 up in a night and will perish in a night.** The Squirrel, 

 agile with life and timidity, gambolling round the root 

 of an ancient beech, its base overgrown with the dew- 

 berry, blue with unsullied fruit, impeded in his frolic 

 sports, half angry darts up the silvery stem again, to 

 peep and wonder at the strange intruder on bis 

 harvest. The Jay springs up, and screaming tells of 

 danger to her brood ; the noisy tribe repeat the call, are 

 hushed and leave us ; the loud laugh of the wood- 

 pecker, joyous and vacant; the hammering of the 

 nuthatch, cleaving its prize in the chink of some dry 

 r5 



