Woodlanders and Field Folk 



PINE-WOOD STUDIES 



A MOONLIGHT PICTURE 



THE dying sun sends a blaze of purple light and 

 throws a lurid crimson over the shaggy pine trunks. 

 The cock of the woods crows from the pine-plumed 

 gloom, and the light shoots upward. Then the tall 

 columns range themselves into aisles, and nought but 

 silence possesses them. Bronze depths of pine 

 needles have blotted out all fair vegetation, and the 

 genii that guard the forest solitudes are great eagle- 

 owls, for ever night-hunting in famine for prey. 



Rugged and corrugated bark covers the floor; 

 and a fallen monster has crashed through the 

 branches of surrounding trees. For the pine, even 

 when set amid its own wild heather, is never 

 deep-rooted. On the bare brae its roots wander in 

 the wildest reticulation over the grey rocks. The 

 lichened trunk towers high up to its umbrageous 



