WILDWOOD WAYS 



at a breath, almost, from obscure and 

 trivial sources. Yet I seem to find a 

 more potent if less spectacular witchery 

 in what has been done to the willows that 

 here and there grow in the thicket that 

 borders the slender bog road. Some 

 winged sprite has touched their branch 

 tips with fairy wand and whispered a 

 potent word to them, and the willows 

 have obeyed and grown cones! These 

 are an inch or more in length and as per- 

 fect with scales as those of the pines up 

 in the wood. But there are no seeds of 

 willow life in them. Instead there is at 

 the core an orange-yellow, minute grub, 

 the larva of a fly that stung the willow 

 tip last spring and, stinging .it, laid her 

 egg therein. 



That the egg should become a grub 

 and that later the grub in turn should 

 become .a fly is nothing in the way of 

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