36 THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE 
Hard scales on the Dogwood buds are starting and 
yielding reluctantly to the swelling pressure ♦ The 
enfolded vegetation that lay dormant through the 
winter is awakening to life and throwing aside its 
manifold coverings ♦ A thousand closely and com- 
pactly wrapped cones of leaves are forcing their 
way upward to the moist air, cracking and bursting 
the unyielding earth and pushing all obstructions 
out of their way* These myriad perforations can 
scarcely be made without an audible disturbance, 
especially in the spring, when even deliberate 
growth is impelled to haste by the spirit of renewing 
life* The sound of growth cannot be entirely a 
delusion* Growth itself may be absolutely silent* But 
the slow crowding aside of myriads of obstructions, 
the perforation and disturbance of last year's leaves, 
the cracking and opening of hardened bark, with 
the enlarging layers of new vegetation, the bursting 
of inelastic scales and husks — all these unite in a 
blended rustle of reviving life, through which the 
faintest squeak of the Brown Creeper or the twitter 
of a Kinglet comes clear and distinct* Listen ! 
