Live Oaks 137 
ing pillars: but who abides therein? Natur- 
ally to the ancestral mind—credulous and 
poetic—nymphs, fauns, and satyrs, since there 
was no visible presence; if not tangible beings, 
then woodland divinities and free spirits of 
the air, for how should such an abode be 
untenanted? 
Though the dryads have long since van- 
ished, the groves are by no means forsaken 
but are inhabited by lively and musical com- 
panies of birds, who in the dense foliage easily 
become as invisible as any spirits of the elder 
woods. Chief among the present-day nymphs 
are the bush-tits, diminutive sprites with the 
manners and customs of chickadees but differ- 
ently attired. The live oak is their home tree. 
It is here they seek their food and here they 
build their pendulous nests of grey lichens. 
Then there is the wren-tit, a bird of unmis- 
takable wren affinities—a wren manner and 
a wren tail—and yet not altogether a wren. 
He confines himself to the shrubbery—lilacs 
and greasewood,—while the bush-tits flit in the 
branches above, ever and anon giving voice to 
his feelings in a sweet but peculiarly metallic 
trill whose quality of tone is not exactly like 
that of any other bird. Visiting spirits of the 
grove are the titmouse, less grey and more 
