The Buzzard of the Wear Swamp 
Looking down upon the oak from twice its height 
loomed a tulip poplar, clean-bolled 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 
boutonniére 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 durrh ! burrh! burrh! 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 
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