Such vigilance over the ever- dying is very 

 comforting and marvelous too. Let any in- 

 different apple-tree begin to have holes, and the 

 tree-toads, the bluebirds, and the red squirrels 

 move in, to fill the empty trunk with new life and 

 the sapless limbs with fresh fruit. Let any tall, 

 stray oak along the river start to die at the top, 

 and straightway a pair of fish-hawks will load 

 new life upon it. And these other, engrafted 

 lives, like the graft of a greening upon wild 

 wood, yield crops more valuable often, and 

 always more interesting, than come from the 

 native stock. 



Perhaps there is no more useless fruit or timber 

 grown than that of the swamp-gums (Nyssa uni- 

 flora} of the Jersey bottoms. But if we value 

 trees according to their capacity for cavities, 

 the naturalist has a right to such a scale of valua- 

 tion, then these gums rank first. The deliberate 

 purpose of a swamp -gum, through its hundred 

 years of life, is to grow as big as possible, that 

 it may hollow out accordingly. They are the 

 natural home-makers of the swamps that border 

 the rivers and creeks in southern New Jersey. 

 What would the coons, the turkey-buzzards, and 

 [176] 



