John Burroughs
Published: 2017-05-18
Total Pages: 72
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Excerpt from Bits of Bird Life: Selections From the Youth's Companion Near my study there used to stand several Old apple-trees that bore fair crops of apples, but better crops Of birds. Every year these Old trees were the scenes Of bird incidents and bird histories that were a source Of much interest and amusement. Young trees may be the best for apples, but Old trees are sure to bear the most birds. If they are very decrepit, and full of dead and hollow branches, they will bear birds in Winter as well as summer. The downy woodpecker wants no better place than the brittle, dozy trunk Of an apple-tree in which to excavate his winter home. My Old apple-trees are all down but one, and this one is probably an octogenarian, and I am afraid cannot stand it another winter. Its body is a mere shell not much over one inch thick, the heart and main interior structure having turned to black mold long ago. An Old tree, unlike an Old person, as long as it lives at all, always has a young streak, or rather ring, in it. It wears a girdle Of perpetual youth. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.