the owls do without them? The wild bees 

 believe the gums are especially built for them. 

 No white -painted hive, with its disappearing 

 squares, offers half as much safety to these free- 

 booters of the summer seas as the gums, open- 

 hearted, thick-walled, and impregnable. 



When these trees alone make up the swamp, 

 there is a roomy, empty, echo-y effect among the 

 great gray boles, with their high, horizontal 

 limbs spanned like rafters above, produced by 

 no other trees I know. It is worth a trip across 

 the continent to listen, under a clear autumn 

 moon, to the cry of a coon -dog far away in the 

 empty halls of such a swamp. To get the true 

 effect of a barred owl's hooting, one wants to 

 find the home of a pair in an ancient gum-swamp. 

 I know such a home, along Cohansey Creek, 

 where, the neighboring farmer tells me, he has 

 heard the owls hoot in spring and autumn since 

 he remembers hearing anything. 



I cannot reach around the butt of the tree that 

 holds the nest. Tapering just a trifle and a 

 little on the lean, it runs up smooth and round 

 for twenty feet, where a big bulge occurs, just- 

 above which is the capacious opening to the 

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