and shock. Encompassing vines and creepers, colossal in strength and
overwhelming in weight, which have strained the tree to breaking point,
ease their burden down, muffling its descent, though now and again the
primal rupture of trunk or branch rings out a sharp protest, and
following the fall is silence--that varying, elusive sensation not to he
expressed by the absence of actual noise.

There are silences which tinkle or buzz in the ears, causing them to ache
with stress and strain; silences dull and sad as a wad of wool; silences
as searching as the odour of musk--as soothing as the perfume of violets.
The crisp silence of the seashore when absolute calm prevails is as
different from the strained, sodden, padded silence of the jungle as the
savour of olives from the raw insipidity of white of egg, for the
cumbersome mantle of leafage is the surest stifler of noise, the truest
cherisher of silence.

The most imperious hour of this realm of silence is three o'clock in the
afternoon, when the sun has absorbed the energies of the most volatile of
birds and insects. An hour later all may begin to assert themselves after
a reviving, siesta; yet during the intensest hour of silence any abrupt
noise--a call, or whistle, or bark of a dog--finds an immediate response.
No sound has been heard for an hour. All the birds have been stricken
dumb or have been banished, yet as an echo to any violation of the
silence comes the sweet, mellow, inquisitive note of the "moor-goody" (to
use the black's name, for the shrike thrush). The bird seems fond of
sound and will answer in trills and chuckles attempts to imitate its
call.

The condition of perfect silence is not for this noisy sphere. The artist
in so-called silences merely registers certain more or less delicate