I was not surprised at every visit to this tree to find some new form of life resting on its branches. A beautiful garter-snake had reached a low branch by climbing to it from a sapling that reached a little above it. There was no break in the highway that led to its very summit. The grass leaned upon ferns, these upon shrubs, these again upon saplings, and so the tree was reached. Any creeping thing could have climbed just eighty feet above the earth with far less danger than men encounter clambering over hills. And not only a zoological garden was this and is every other old tree, but the oak had its botanic garden as well. When we consider that many of the branches were so wide and level that one could walk upon them, it is not strange that earth, dead leaves, and water should lodge in many places. Indeed, besides the two gardens I have mentioned, the oak had also an aquarium. But I cannot go into particulars. The parasitic plant-life—not truly such, like the mistletoe—was a striking feature. Maple seeds had lodged and sprouted, and in a saucer-shaped depression where dust and water had lodged a starved hawkweed had got so far towards maturity as to be in bud. * * * * * It may appear as utter foolishness to others, but I believe that trees might in time become tiresome. Whether in leaf or bare of foliage, there is a fixedness that palls at last. We are given to looking from the tree to the world beyond; to hurrying from beneath their branches to the open country. To live in a dense forest is akin to living in a great city. There is a sense of confinement against which, sooner or later, we are sure to rebel. We long for change. The man who is perfectly satisfied has no knowledge of what satisfaction really is. Logical or not, I turned my attention from the tree at last, and thought, What of the outlook? Directly north, in the shallow basin, hemmed in by low hills, lies the town. A cloud of smoke and steam rests over it, and barely above it reach the church-spires and tall factory chimneys, as if the place was struggling to be free, but only had its finger-tips out of the mire of the town, of which I know but little. My wonder is that so many people stay there, and, stranger still, wild life not only crowds its outskirts, but ventures into its very midst. In one town, not far away, I found the nests of seventeen species of birds, but then there was a large old cemetery and a millpond within its boundaries. Time was when through the town before me there flowed a creek, and a pretty wood flourished along its south bank. The creek is now a sewer, and an open one at that, and yet the musk-rat cannot quite make up his mind to leave it. Stranger than this was seeing recently, in a small creek discolored by a dyeing establishment, a little brown diver. How it could bring itself to swim in such filth must remain a mystery. A queer old character that had lived all his life in the country once said of the