ARBOR DA V MANUAL. 
259 
THE FALLEN MONARCH. 
S ITTING there by the side of this prone Monarch, and measuring its diame¬ 
ter in my eye, or climbing up twenty-five or thirty feet upon its side — 
-comparing it in my mind with the largest trees I had ever seen elsewhere—im¬ 
agining it stretched out in some city street, filling all the carriageway and 
reaching up to the second story windows—the idea of its vastness took full 
possession of me, and for the first time I grasped its greatness. And even 
then, I do not think the idea of size and measurement so overwhelmed me as 
-did the thought of its vast age and the centuries it had looked down upon. 
The great space it had filled was nothing to the ages it had bridged over. No 
inanimate monument of man’s work was here — no unwrapping of dead Pha¬ 
raohs from the mummy-cloths of the embalmers ; but here had been life and 
.growth and increase, and running out of roots and spreading forth of branches, 
-and budding leaves and flowing sap, and all the processes of nature with poise 
.and swing from winter’s sleep to summer’s waking, and the noiseless register¬ 
ing of the years and centuries in figures that could not be mistaken from the 
heart of the sapling out to the last rind of bark that hugged its age. And 
though one looks with profoundest wonder at the vast size of these monsters, 
it is, after all, the suggestion they give of their far reach backward into time 
that most impresses the beholder. 
The rings in the trunks indicate ages varying from a few years to upwards of 
two thousand. Those of about ten feet in diameter are in the neighborhood 
of six hundred years old. Most of the largest trees have been damaged more 
•or less by fire. One of them has been entirely hollowed out, so that ourwhole 
party of twelve rode in upon our horses and stood together in the cavity. The 
tree grows on, and is as green at the top as any of them, notwithstanding the 
.hollowness of its trunk. 
Isaac H. Bromley. " The Big Trees and the Yoscmite. 
Scribner's Magazine, January, 1872. 
THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS. 
T HEAR, from many a little throat, 
1 A warble interrupted long ; 
.3 hear the robin’s flute-like note, 
The bluebird’s slenderer song. 
Brown meadows and the russet hill, 
Not yet the haunt of grazing herds, 
And thickets by the glimmering rill, 
Are all alive with birds. 
Bryant. 
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell; 
It fell upon a little western flower, 
Before milk-white] now purple, with love’s wound, 
And maidens call it Love-in-idleness. 
Midsummer Night's Dream. 
