See how the pines spire without end higher and higher, and make a
graceful fringe to the earth. And who shall count the finer
cobwebs that soar and float away from their utmost tops, and the
myriad insects that dodge between them. Leaves are of more
various forms than the alphabets of all languages put together;
of the oaks alone there are hardly two alike, and each expresses
its own character.
In all her products Nature only develops her simplest germs. One
would say that it was no great stretch of invention to create
birds. The hawk, which now takes his flight over the top of the
wood, was at first, perchance, only a leaf which fluttered in its
aisles. From rustling leaves she came in the course of ages to
the loftier flight and clear carol of the bird.
Salmon Brook comes in from the west under the railroad, a mile
and a half below the village of Nashua. We rowed up far enough
into the meadows which border it to learn its piscatorial history
from a haymaker on its banks. He told us that the silver eel was
formerly abundant here, and pointed to some sunken creels at its
mouth.
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