510 TREES, THE TITMOUSE AND THE WOODPECKER. 



present year, 1835 thirty-five years from the first operation I en- 

 larged the lowest hole next the walk 4 inches ; and, by the help of a 

 little iron shovel, I took from the interior of the tree four large wheel- 

 barrows full of decomposed wood, not unlike coffee-grounds in ap- 

 pearance. With this substance there came out some of the small 

 scraps of stone which I had used in making the floor for the owl's 

 residence proof incontestable that the rain-water had gradually 

 destroyed the internal texture of the sycamore, from the broken 

 branch at the height of 20 feet. The tree, though hollow as a drum, 

 "or lovers' vows," is now perfectly healthy. At a little distance 

 from this is another sycamore, once a towering and majestic tree. 

 Some fifteen years ago, it put out a fungus, about 25 feet from the 

 ground. I saw, by the enormous size of the fungus, that the tree 

 must give way erelong. In 1826, during a heavy gale of wind, it 

 broke in two at the diseased part, leaving one huge branch, which 

 continued to be clothed with rich foliage every succeeding season. 

 I built a stonework on the remaining part of the trunk, by way of 

 covering, and I made sixteen apartments in it for the jackdaws, 

 planting an ivy root at the bottom. In the summer of 183 1, another 

 large fungus made its appearance at 8 feet from the ground. One 

 Sunday morning, during a raging tempest, the trunk gave way at the 

 fungus, carrying the remaining branch, the stonework, and the jack- 

 daws' nests, with a tremendous crash, into the lake below. I roofed 

 the remainder of the stump again, leaving an entrance for the owl. 

 It is now quite covered with ivy, and has sent forth a partial vegeta- 

 tion annually from its last misfortune. In June of the present year, 

 another large fungus came out at 4 feet from the ground. I under- 

 stand the warning, and I clearly foresee that the final doom of this 

 static malefida volucri is close at hand. Thus have two sycamores, 

 within a few feet of each other, been a prey to distinct diseases, and 

 both of them afforded an inward retreat to birds. The first, having 

 entirely lost its inside by the slow-consuming process of wet entering 

 at a broken branch, still flourishes by the art of man. The second, 

 for centuries the ornament of the rock upon which it grew, struck at 

 last by the hand of nature with an inward distemper which nothing 

 could arrest, broke down at intervals in partial ruins, and probably 

 will disappear for ever during the next fierce wintry blast 



