June midnights, and then, ceasing, make stillness more still. Now watch
that woodpecker, roving in ceaseless search, travelling over fifty trees
in an hour, running from top to bottom of some small sycamore, pecking
at every crevice, pausing to dot a dozen inexplicable holes in a row
upon an apple-tree, but never once intermitting the low, querulous
murmur of housekeeping anxiety: now she stops to hammer with all her
little life at some tough piece of bark, strikes harder and harder
blows, throws herself back at last, flapping her wings furiously as she
brings down her whole strength again upon it; finally it yields, and
grub after grub goes down her throat, till she whets her beak after the
meal as a wild beast licks its claws, and off on her pressing business
once more.

It is no wonder that there is so little substantial enjoyment of Nature
in the community, when we feed children on grammars and dictionaries
only, and take no pains to train them to see that which is before
their eyes. The mass of the community have "summered and wintered" the
universe pretty regularly, one would think, for a good many years; and
yet nine persons out of ten in the town or city, and two out of three
even in the country, seriously suppose, for instance, that the buds upon
trees are formed in the spring; they have had them before their eyes
all winter, and never seen them. As large a proportion suppose, in good
faith, that a plant grows at the base of the stem, instead of at the
top: that is, if they see a young sapling in which there is a crotch
at five feet from the ground, they expect to see it ten feet from the
ground by-and-by,--confounding the growth of a tree with that of a man
or animal. But perhaps the best of us could hardly bear the severe test
unconsciously laid down by a small child of my acquaintance. The boy's
father, a college-bred man, had early chosen the better part, and
employed his fine faculties in rearing laurels in his own beautiful