ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 259 



THE FALLEN MONARCH. 



SITTING there by the side of this prone Monarch, and measuring its diame- 

 ter in my eye, or climbing up twenty-five or thirty feec upon its side 

 comparing it in my mind with the largest trees I had ever seen elsewhere im- 

 agining it stretched out in some city street, filling all the carriageway and 

 reaching up to the second story windows the idea of its vastness took full 

 possession of me, and for the first time I grasped its greatness. And even 

 then, I do not think the idea of size and measurement so overwhelmed me as 

 did the thought of its vast age and the centuries it had looked down upon. 

 The gre.it space it had filled was nothing to the ages it had bridged over. Xo 

 inanimate monument of man's work was here no unwrapping of dead Pha- 

 raohs from the mummy-cloths of the embalmers ; but here had been life and 

 growth and increase, and running out of roots and spreading forth of branches, 

 and budding leaves and flowing sap, and all the processes of nature with poise 

 and swing from winter's sleep to summer's waking, and the noiseless register- 

 ing of the years and centuries in figures that could not be mistaken from the 

 heart of the sapling out to the last rind of bark that hugged its age. And 

 though one looks with profoundest wonder at the vast size of these monsters, 

 it is, after all, the suggestion they give of their far reach backward into time 

 that most impresses the beholder. 



The rings in the trunks indicate ages varying from a few years to upwards of 

 two thousand. Those of about ten feet in diameter are in the neighborhood 

 of six hundred years old. Most of the largest trees have been damaged more 

 or less by fire. One of them has been entirely hollowed out, so that our whole 

 party of twelve rode in upon our horses and stood together in the cavity. The 

 tree grows on, and is as green at the top as any of them, notwithstanding the 

 hollowness of its trunk. 



ISAAC H. BROMLEY. The Big Trees and the Yosemite. 



Scribner's Magazine, January, 1872. 



THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS. 



1HEAR, from many a little throat, Brown meadows and the russet hill, 

 A warble interrupted long ; Not yet the haunt of grazing herds, 



I hear the robin's flute-like note, And thickets by the glimmering rill, 



The bluebird's slenderer song. Are all alive with birds. 



BRYANT. 



Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell; 



It fell upon a little western flower, 



Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, 



And maidens call it Lcrce-in-Idlentss. 



Midsummer Nighfs Dream. 



