Pintail

“ The Zoological Gardens at Cairo are visited nearly every winter by a few Pintails. They feed on grass and water-weeds, and{181} all the teeming larva of flies and other insects that haunt shallow pools and puddles. ”

“ Mayo.—The unusually large numbers of Pintails visiting the estuary this season is very remarkable, when the mildness of the weather is considered, and except during the hard frost of January, 1881, when the mercury fell to 7° on the night of the 15th, I have never seen their numbers equalled. We usually have a little family party of twelve to fifteen birds regularly visiting the sands in company of Wigeon every winter ”

“ Scarcely a specimen of any other tree is to be found associated with the pine. But there are some thickets of the little saw palmettos and a magnificent assemblage of tall grasses, their splendid panicles waving grandly in the warm wind, and making low tuneful changes in the glistening light that is flashed from their bent stems.
Not a pine, not a palm, in all this garden excels these stately grass plants in beauty of wind-waving gestures. Here are panicles that are one mass of refined purple; others that have flowers as yellow as ripe oranges, and stems polished and shining like steel wire. ”

“ The path is carpeted with moss that feels like a sponge beneath your feet. The greenish-grey tint of the lichen clinging to the trees is most effective when it stands in the shadows a little removed from the pathway. The larch, the pine, and the birch lift their proud heads above the spruce-trees, the white of the pine glimmering like silver in the sunlight. If the stillness of the woods is broken at all, it is by the thud of the woodman’s axe, the sound of falling water, or the weird, haunting note of the woodpecker. ”

“ Many varieties of the red, yellow, and pitch pine, intermingled with the graceful larch, the picturesque beech and maple, birch, elm, oak, and numerous other tribes of forest timber, grow down close to the water’s side, spreading in stately grandeur over the broad plains, or stretching proudly up to the summits of the mountains that descend precipitously to the river. In summer the bright and cheerful green of the forests is exceedingly beautiful and refreshing to the eye, the dark pines alone forming a sombre contrast to the vivid freshness of the deciduous trees ”

“ They assemble in small flocks, climbing rapidly along the rough bark of the pitch-pine, rapping here and there, with their wedgelike beaks, to scare some drowsy insect; inducing it to rush out, to be nipped, or speared, with the barbed tongue, ere half-awake; others, sitting on the topmost branches of the oaks and pines, continually darted off after some fugitive moth or other winged insect, capturing it much in the fashion of the flycatchers. The harsh and discordant voice is made up for in beauty of plumage. ”

“ The eye is perpetually searching for something new, and however it may have been with other explorers, I think we may venture to say, that with us, novelty has been a far more constant or immediate passion, than utility. The “lightning splintered” pine, which raises its dead arms, amid the living foliage, is suited to call forth a remark. The waterfowl with a tuft, or the shell with a deep cicatrice or a pearly interior, gives occasion for interrupting the silence, that plainer species would have left unbroken. ”

“ Coming at last to the rim of the forest, you look out over the sea, where go lumber-laden ships to all the world. Close by the beach, dwarfed and distorted by winds of the ocean, and nourished by its fogs, north-coast pine (Pinus contorta) extends its prostrate forms over the cliffs and dunes of the shore, just as your first acquaintance, the white-bark pine, spreads over the dunes and ridges of the mountain. They are brothers of a noble race. ”

“ The pitch pines are very inspiriting to behold. Their green is as much enlivened and freshened as that of the lichens. It suggests a sort of sunlight on them, though not even a patch of clear sky is to be seen to-day. As dry and olive or slate-colored lichens are of a fresh and living green, so the already green pine needles have acquired a far livelier tint, as if they enjoyed this moisture as much as the lichens do. They seem to be lit up more than when the sun falls on them. ”

“ The trees and bushes are full of feathered folk; and every flower-bed has its butterflies, giant black and red, graceful green and bronze, and tiny trembling blue. The coarse grass of the compounds teems with insect-life in spite of the hungry birds, the seven sisters, for ever hopping and babbling and feasting. ”

“ Again the forest pageant changes. There are groves of pine stricken with hoary age, bearded like patriarchs with long, pendent streamers of colourless moss;285 then comes a young growth of pine, fore-doomed to early death which already shows in the bronze of premature decay. It is a beautiful spot, nevertheless, balsam-sweet and strewn with needles that nurture violets of yellow and purple, twin flowers and Queen's Cups. ”

“ FAIRY FRUIT TO-DAY the September west winds have begun the fall house-cleaning by sweeping the tops of the pine woods. All the morning the little brown scales which nestle close to the base of each pine leaf as it grows, protecting it from the withering force of the midsummer sun, have been soaring and spinning in high glee, curiously lighting up with brown glimmers the solemn sanctuaries beneath. ”

“ Why, there hasn't been time for the bushes to grow. That's always the way with the blueberries, though: There may not have been the ghost of a sign Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine, But get the pine out of the way, you may burn The pasture all over until not a fern Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick, And presto, they're up all around you as thick And hard to explain as a conjuror's trick. ”

“ Grey lichens, green velvet moss, the purple foxglove, the pink rose of Gueldres, and every species of wild flower peculiar to the lowlands, covered the rugged banks and freestone rocks, through the fissures of which many a tiny rill poured down into the deep and lonely dell to join the Esk upon its passage through a thousand windings, till it joined the sea near Pinkey's corpse-strewn field. ”

“ A white bark pine will climb where the weight of the winter drifts is so heavy that it is never able to lift its decumbent trunk from the ground, clinging like ivy to the wall in which it roots.
In the Spring the rich florescence of the conifers sheds pollen in drifts that, carried down the melting water, warn the sheep-herder and the orchardist a hundred miles away of the advancing season. [158] A pine forest in flower is one of the things worth seeing which is most seldom seen, for at its best the high passes are still choked by snow, the lakes ice-locked, the trails dangerous. ”

“ In winter, when the snow is deep, the cones of the mountain pines are empty, and the juniper, hemlock, and dwarf pine orchard buried, he comes down to glean seeds in the yellow pine forests, startling the grouse with his loud screams. ”

“ In the spring, when the buds are breaking, the air is filled with the scent of it. Then there would be successive rows of pines in serried ranks, mingled with the cedar and broad-leafed maple, relieved by the gorgeous crimson and Indian-yellow tints of the vine-maple and hazel. ”

“ In these wide, silent wastes, where there are miles of scrub-pine without a clearing, where the blue, hazy air is laden with the odor of resin, where the soft glooms are mingled with softer, shyer lights, the swifts seem what they actually are—creatures of another, earlier world. When one darts over your foot and scurries up a tree to watch you, it is easy to imagine other antediluvian shapes moving in the deeper shadows beyond. How they rustle the leaves and scratch the rough pine bark! ”

“ The feeling did not leave her through the day, and she wandered out into the woods that lay above the house, up to the pine grove, which was her favourite retreat; where, through the tall, straight stems, the sun quivered in amber streaks, and changed the moss from palest azure green to deepest emerald, or from flaming yellow to glowing crimson-brown. ”

“ Pine grass and roots, tow, and a variety of vegetable fibres, thread, floss silk, and cobwebs are all made use of to bind the little nest together and attach it to the twigs whence it depends. Grass again, moss, vegetable fibre, seed-down, silk, cotton, lichen, roots and the like are used in the body of the nest, which is lined with silky down, hair, moss, and fern-roots, or even silk, while at times tiny silvery cocoons or scraps of rich-coloured lichen are affixed as ornaments to the exterior. ”

“ It is an open cleared space, that mound beneath the pine-tree; a few low shrubs and seedling pines, with the slender waving branches of the late-flowering pearly-tinted asters, the elegant fringed gentian with open bells of azure blue, the last and loveliest of autumn flowers and winter-greens, brighten the ground with wreaths of shining leaves and red berries. ”

“ But the snow still lay in all its virgin whiteness over the earth.
A YEAR OF THEIR LIVES I To the north, south, east, and west—in all directions for hundreds of miles—stretched forests and bogs enveloped in a wide-spread veil of lichen. Brown-trunked cedars and pines towered on high. Beneath there was a thick, impenetrable jungle of firs, alders, wild-berries, junipers, and low-hanging birches. Pungent, deep-sunken, lichen- covered springs of reddish water were hidden amidst undergrowth in little glades, couched in layers of turf bordered by red bilberries and huckleberries. ”

“ But for the most part, white pine's our best lay. Pine thrives on soil that stunts oak and twists beech. Our oak isn't good quality, and maple is such an interminably slow grower. In about twenty years from planting, you can make your first, box-board cutting of pine, and every ten years thereafter—"
Arnold had received this avalanche of figures and species with an astonished blink, and now protested energetically that he had had not the slightest intention of precipitating any such flood. ”

“ This pretty delicate species loves the moderate shade of groves and thickets, it is often found in open pinelands of second growth, and evidently prefers a light and somewhat sandy soil to any other, with glimpses of sunshine stealing down upon it. ”

“ The trunks of the pines scarcely interrupt a prospect, whose tedious sameness is only varied by tracts, here and there, of almost impenetrable swamp, thickly grown up with bays, water oaks, cypresses and other large trees, adown whose spreading branches and whitened trunks, a long dusky moss hangs in melancholy festoons, drooping to the ground, the very drapery of disease and death. ”

“ I was rather surprised to find a great extent of low houses and pits devoted to the growth of the pine, without observing a single fruit amongst the whole stock that was scarcely worth cutting. There cannot be less than one thousand feet in length of houses and pits adapted to the pine-apple, and these varying from eight to twelve feet in width. The principal range was heated by smoke flues, and the plants plunged in saw-dust, with tan under; which practice is frequently adopted in this country, especially when tan is scarce. ”

“ Along the streams which glide through the prairies, there is a luxuriant growth of noble timber, such as maple, magnolia, blue and green ash, red oak, and cedar, around which climb vines loaded with grapes. Near the sea-shores, the pine, both black and white, becomes exceedingly common, while the smaller plains and hills are covered with that peculiar species of the prickly pear upon which the cochineal insect feeds. ”

“ The outermost belt of all, that next the fields, was of thrifty, gummy-trunked young pines whose living needles in air and dead ones on earth offer so delicious an odor to the nostrils of the passer-by, and so deadly a breath to those seedlings that would compete with them for the worthless waste they grow on. ”

“ In this neighborhood, where oaks and pines are about equally dispersed, if you look through the thickest pine wood, even the seemingly unmixed pitch-pine ones, you will commonly detect many little oaks, birches, and other hard woods, sprung from seeds carried into the thicket by squirrels and other animals, and also blown thither, but which are overshadowed and choked by the pines. The denser the evergreen wood, the more likely it is to be well planted with these seeds, because the planters incline to resort with their forage to the closest covert. ”

“ In the woods, in the bark of the trees, the varied shades of the branches as their size diminishes, the adhering lichens, the stems of the underwood, now grey, now green; the dry stalks of plants, brown, white, or dark, all the innumerable minor hues that cross and interlace, there is suggested the woven texture of tints found on the wings of birds. For brighter tones the autumn leaves can be resorted to, and in summer the finches rising from the grass spring upwards from among flowers that could supply them with all their colours. ”

“ Our red-wood pine, when come to some age, is in wet ground attacked by rot, which commences in the bulb and adjacent roots and stem, in a manner very similar to the rot in larch. The red-wood also approaches nearer to the outside where this rot exists, and on the side of the tree where the rot is greatest. Most of our planted red pine forest, especially in poor wet tills, and in all flat sandy moorish ground of close subsoil, fall by decay at from 30 to 60 years old. ”

“ It is not, in fact, surprising that the pine should be often undermined; it shoots its fibres in such a horizontal direction, merely on the surface of the earth, requiring only enough to cover those that cling to the crags. Nothing proves to me so clearly that it is the air which principally nourishes trees and plants as the flourishing appearance of these pines. The firs, demanding a deeper soil, are seldom seen in equal health, or so numerous on the barren cliffs. ”