DECEMBER 



19 



Stood within a rod of a downy woodpecker on 

 an apple-tree. . . . It is briskly and incessantly tap- 

 ping all round the dead limbs, but hardly twice 

 in a place, as if to sound the tree, and so see if it 

 has any worm in it, or perchance to start them. 

 How much he deals with the bark of trees, all his 

 life long tapping and inspecting it. He it is that 

 scatters these fragments of bark and lichens about 

 on the snow at the base of trees. . . . How briskly 

 he glides up or drops himself down a limb, creep- 

 ing round and round, and hopping from limb to 

 limb, and now flitting with a rippling sound of his 



wings to another tree. 



THOREAU: Winter. 



2O 



The country is more of a wilderness, more of a 

 wild solitude, in the winter than in the summer. 

 The wild comes out. . . . The partridge comes to 

 the orchard for buds ; the rabbit comes to the gar- 

 den and lawn ; the crows and jays come to the ash- 

 heap and corncrib, the snow buntings to the stack 

 and to the barnyard ; the sparrows pilfer from the 

 domestic fowls ; the pine grosbeak comes down 

 from the north and shears your maples of their 

 buds ; the fox prowls about your premises at night ; 

 and the red squirrels find your grain in the barn or 

 steal the butternuts from your attic. In fact, win- 

 ter, like some great calamity, changes the status of 

 most creatures and sets them adrift. 



BURROUGHS: Signs and Seasons. 



