“Do you see that tall pine near that massive monument?”
“Where?” he asked, looking around.
“Just behind you,” said Scotch pine, nodding its head in that direction.
“Oh, yes, I see now. Such a tall, straight trunk! Its crown grows in a point, making one think of a high church steeple piercing the sky.”
“As its limbs are above your reach it is useless for you to try to get a branch. If you will get papa to break you a twig some day, and you examine it, you will find that its needles, which are finer than mine, are in bunches of five. See when the wind blows how gracefully her boughs bend and sway. Go there and look at the cones.”
Off he went. Returning soon, he said: “The cones are not at all like yours; they are long and different in shape. The silky needles look something like a paint brush at the end of each twig.”
“It is a far more beautiful tree than I, so straight and lofty. Its pointed top looks down upon all the other great trees in this cemetery. If you could go through Canada and northern United States, especially around the Great Lakes, you would see great forests of this – the white pine. As its wood contains little resin it looks white, and is not so valuable for fuel. As it is easily nailed and worked, it is said to be a soft wood. You can whittle it with your knife which Santa brought you. Furniture, shingles, laths, boards and many other things are made of it.
“If you could tramp around the Rocky Mountains you would find another soft pine tree, popularly called the sugar pine because the burnt resin has at times been used by the Indians for sugar. Coarse cakes are made from its nut-like seeds. Its cones grow to be more than a foot long. Its leaves, too, grow in fives.
“The pine growing in the South, known as the Southern or Georgia pine, has yellow, hard wood. It is heavy and very strong. It makes fine lumber, ties, fuel, fencing and furniture. It is used in shipbuilding and for other things when a durable wood is needed. It is rich in turpentine, resin and tar. Indeed, the markets of Europe are supplied with those articles largely by the Scotch pine and those of the United States, chiefly by the Georgia pine. Because of the length of the southern pine’s needles, which sometimes measure more than a foot, it is sometimes called the long-leaved pine. The leaves grow in threes. Its large cone also contains seeds, which are eaten.”
One day when visiting the pine, Jacob said: “When I get big I mean to visit some of the pine forests.”
“Go as soon as you can, then, my boy. In cutting pine timber men are so thoughtless and lacking in foresight and management that they are being cleared away very fast.”
“Then I must try to teach them to know the pines better and to love them more for their beauty and their great usefulness. Then I am sure they will use better judgment.”
“Thank you, Jacob.”
Another day Jacob asked: “Have you told me of all your cousins?”
“Oh, no, indeed. I have told you of only a few of my nearest ones. There are seventy first cousins, of which thirty-five different ones are American trees. Then there is a host of more distant relatives. There are the twelve spruces, with short, sharp-pointed, four-cornered needles which grow singly all around the branches. They like cool places, and make their homes in great forests at the north or on mountains. The fir sisters and brothers have flat, blunt leaves growing on opposite sides of the branches, making them look like combs. The larches, who lose their needles in the fall; the cedars, the junipers, the arbor vitæ, the great California redwood – there are so many I can not name them all! They all belong to the cone bearing families.”
Jacob, who loved the talking pine tree, spent many happy hours in its shade and learning lessons taught by it. Through it he came to know of the wonderful great trees of California; of what the straight, tall masts of ships see; of secrets known only by telegraph and telephone poles; of the sweet sounds of musical instruments; of things which props can tell of mining affairs; of the travels of railroad ties and the tragedies which occur within their sight; of the water folk with whom bridge piles neighbor; of the animals whose hides the evergreen barks help to tan; of the birds and animals who seek the shelter of these trees and feed upon their seeds and young buds; and of beautiful things with which loving hands deck the gay Christmas tree and the hosts of happy children who love it most of all trees.
Every child who will select a favorite tree and watch it with patient, loving care will also find himself helped. Although it may not be able to talk as Jacob’s talking pine tree did, if he will but be faithful to its lessons it will teach him many useful facts; will prompt him to reach, like a tree, upward and outward, and to throw out from his life an influence as healthful and pure as the fragrance of the pine.
THE KING RAIL
(Rallus elegans.)
The King Rail is the largest of the American true rails and is favored with a number of popular names. It is known as the Red-breasted Rail, the Marsh Hen, the Sedge Hen and the Mudhen. It frequents the fresh-water marshes of the eastern United States and is found as far north as Maine and Wisconsin and as far west as Kansas.
This fine bird very closely resembles the clapper rail which inhabits the saltwater marshes of eastern North America. The two species, however, may be easily distinguished by the difference in size and color. The clapper rail is much smaller and the upper parts are more ashy or grayish in color and the lower parts are duller and more yellowish.
Fifteen of the one hundred and eighty known species of the family Rallidæ, which includes the rails, gallinules and coots, inhabit North America.
The rails are not fitted for easy flight and find safety from an enemy by running and hiding, only taking to flight when all other means of escape have been exhausted. They not only have “a body proportioned and balanced for running, but also capable of compression to the narrowness of a wedge, in order to pass readily through the thick growths of the marshes, and also to aid them, perhaps, in their peculiar habit of walking on the bottom under the water in search of food.” Their feet, because of their large size and the length of the toes, are well adapted to the soft mire and floating vegetation in which they live. With long legs and well developed muscles the rails are able to “run like very witches in their reedy mazes, and were it not for their sharp, cackling voices, their presence would scarcely be detected.”
Unless approached too rudely, the female when setting on her nest will allow a very close inspection. She will seem to be as interested in the observer as he is in her. There will seem to be an expression of wonder in her face. If she is approached more closely than she likes she slips from her nest and gracefully runs through the reeds and grass and soon disappears.
The nest is usually constructed with flag stems and grasses. When the nests are built on dry ground they are usually placed in a depression in a tuft of grass and somewhat resemble the nest of the meadow lark. The nests are usually placed over water in tufts of marsh-grass or flags. Frequently the bottom of the nest is in the water and the top a few inches above it.
Mr. Silloway says: “The King Rail is said to be irritable and quarrelsome in its disposition, and it is especially overbearing toward its neighbors. The species should be named the ‘queen rail,’ for the female is without doubt the head of the family. Is it not she who sometimes takes possession of the homes of her meek neighbors, the gallinules? Is it not she who defends her home so spiritedly when it is threatened? Hence it seems to me that the King Rail is more king by marriage than in his own right. She lords it over the gentle-spirited mudhens with whom she dwells, and frequently saves herself the labor of making a nest and the time to lay so many eggs, by appropriating both nest and eggs of a comfortably settled gallinule. I have frequently found nests containing incubated eggs of the Florida gallinule and fresh eggs of the rail – indubitable evidence to me that the rail was the usurper of the home.”
BETWEEN THE DAYLIGHT AND THE DARK
She sat in the deepening twilight awaiting the coming of her lover. The wind whispered in the rustling tree tops, but she heeded it not, though she turned her handsome