Looking down upon the oak from twice its height 

 loomed a tulip poplar, clean-boiled for thirty feet, and 

 in the top all green and gold with blossoms. It was 

 a resplendent thing beside the oak, yet how unmis- 

 takably the gnarled old monarch wore the crown. 

 Its girth more than balanced the poplar's greater 

 height, and as for blossoms, Nature knows the beauty 

 of strength and inward majesty, and has pinned no 

 boutonniere upon the oak. 



My buzzard now was hardly more than half a mile 

 away, and plainly seen through the rifts in the lofty 

 timbered roof above me. As I was nearing the top of 

 a large fallen pine that lay in my course, I was startled 

 by the di^rr/i / biirrh ! biirrh ! of three partridges tak- 

 ing flight just beyond, near the foot of the tree. Their 

 exploding seemed all the more real when three little 

 clouds of dust-smoke rose out of the low, wet bottom 

 and drifted up against the green. 



Then I saw an interesting sight. In falling, the 

 pine with its wide-reaching, multitudinous roots had 

 snatched at the shallow, sandy bottom and torn out 

 a giant fistful, leaving a hole about two feet deep and 

 more than a dozen feet wide. The sand thus lifted into 

 the air had gradually washed down into a mound on 



195 



