singing winds.

This tree is pre-eminently picturesque, far surpassing not only its
companion species of the mountains in this respect, but also the most
noted of the lowland oaks and elms. Some stand firmly erect, feathered
with radiant tail tassels down to the ground, forming slender, tapering
towers of shining verdure; others with two or three specialized branches
pushed out at right angles to the trunk and densely clad with the
tasseled sprays, take the form of beautiful ornamental crosses. Again,
in the same woods you find trees that are made up of several boles
united near the ground, and spreading in easy curves at the sides in
a plane parallel to the axis of the mountain, with the elegant tassels
hung in charming order between them the whole making a perfect harp,
ranged across the main wind-lines just where they may be most effective
in the grand storm harmonies. And then there is an infinite variety of
arching forms, standing free or in groups, leaning away from or toward
each other in curious architectural structures,--innumerable tassels
drooping under the arches and radiating above them, the outside glowing
in the light, masses of deep shade beneath, giving rise to effects
marvelously beautiful,--while on the roughest ledges of crumbling
limestone are lowly old giants, five or six feet in diameter, that have
braved the storms of more than a thousand years. But, whether old or
young, sheltered or exposed to the wildest gales, this tree is ever
found to be irrepressibly and extravagantly picturesque, offering a
richer and more varied series of forms to the artist than any other
species I have yet seen.

One of the most interesting mountain excursions I have made in the State
was up through a thick spicy forest of these trees to the top of the
highest summit of the Troy Range, about ninety miles to the south of
Hamilton. The day was full of perfect Indian-summer sunshine, calm and
bracing. Jays and Clarke crows made a pleasant stir in the foothill
pines and junipers; grasshoppers danced in the hazy light, and rattled
on the wing in pure glee, reviving suddenly from the torpor of a frosty
October night to exuberant summer joy. The squirrels were working
industriously among the falling nuts; ripe willows and aspens made
gorgeous masses of color on the russet hillsides and along the edges of
the small streams that threaded the higher ravines; and on the smooth
sloping uplands, beneath the foxtail pines and firs,