A DISCOURSE ON TREES 229 



draws back his breath, and all the woods are still. 

 Then some single leaf is tickled, and quivers all 

 alone. I am sure there is no wind. The other 

 leaves about it are still. Where it gets its motion 

 I cannot tell, but there it goes fanning itself and 

 restless among its sober fellows. By and by one 

 or two others catch the impulse. The rest hold 

 out a moment, but soon catching the contagious 

 merriment, away goes the whole tree and all its 

 neighbors, the leaves running in ripples all down 

 the forest side. I expect almost to hear them 

 laugh out loud. A stroke of wind upon the forest, 

 indolently swelling and subsiding, is like a stroke 

 upon a hive of bees, for sound; and like stirring a 

 fire full of sparks for upspringing thoughts and 

 ideal suggestions. The melodious whirl draws out 

 a flittering swarm of sweet images that play before 

 the eye like those evening troops of gauzy insects 

 that hang in the air between you and the sun, and 

 pipe their own music, and flit in airy rounds of 

 mingled dance as if the whole errand of their lives 

 was to swing in mazes of sweet music. 



Different species of trees move their leaves very 

 differently, so that one may sometimes tell by the 

 motion of shadows on the ground, if he be too 

 indolent to look up, under what kind of tree he is 

 dozing. On the tulip-tree (which has the finest 

 name that ever tree had, making the very pronoun- 

 cing of its name almost like the utterance of a 



