HAZEL-TREE. 305 



The farmer looks at me in passing, and says to the 

 trudging urchin who runs beside him, " You'll have a fine 

 nutting season, my boy." Artists, too, who come into this 

 woody neighbourhood purposely to sketch trees, make 

 drawings of me, partly on account of my wild growing-place, 

 and the rushing stream that leaps from out the hollow tree, 

 which serves as a trough, and partly on account of my 

 own picturesque appearance ; but no one thinks concerning 

 the curious instincts of such confiding creatures as resort 

 to my leaves and nuts. Even when the fierce east wind, 

 or unthinking boys in their haste and eagerness, have 

 broken off some of my branches and laid them prostrate, 

 they become the growing-place of a minute parasitic fungus, 

 which is resorted to by an insect equally minute ; and this 

 fungus, originating upon the inner bark, makes her way 

 through the outer, and throws wide her powdery seeds. 

 Beside her may be seen her tawny saffron-coloured sister, 

 the wasp-nest Trichia, rose-red when young, but afterwards 

 assuming a deeper hue, and of which the capsule resembles 



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