The Seniors of the Forest 269 
In July pine-roots give a home and a main- 
tenance to some curious parasitic plants—‘‘ pine- 
” 
drops,’’ ‘‘pine-sap,’’ and ‘‘Indian-pipe,’’ or ‘‘ ghost- 
flower.’”’ In latter summer the only bits of color 
on the ground are fungi,—white, yellow, orange, 
and red,—which come pushing through the mat of 
fallen pine-needles on which they live and feed. 
There are few bees in the evergreen woods, and 
fewer butterflies. The birds seen in the shadowy 
aisles are the little warblers, which converse in low 
trills and twitterings. The joyous ringing bird- 
strains will be heard in copse or swale, in orchard, 
or meadow,—not in the far withdrawing vistas which 
lead between these pillared trunks to deeper solitudes. 
The brooding silence of the evergreen woods is 
broken only by the occasional chatter of a squirrel, 
by wind passing through the boughs with a sound 
like the wash of waves on far-off shingle, and, per- 
haps, by the tremulous whistle of the pine-linnet, 
or the bell-like notes of the hermit-thrush. 
Here and there, under the trees, are those 
cousins of the ferns which look so confusingly like 
evergreens that they have received the names of 
‘‘ ground-pine’’ and “‘ trailing-hemlock.”’ 
They are fitting companions to the pine-trees, 
for both represent the vegetable life of the elder 
