my last bird upwards of twenty years ago),

it was more like a cedar grove, although by searching for them one could still discover a few stumps and ruins of what had once been apple trees. "Perish your civilization!" Mother Nature seemed to be saying. "Give me a few years, and I will undo the whole of it." I was half glad to hear her. The planter of the orchard was dead long ago, and his work had followed him.

But the holly trees! They are Nature's own children. I would have a look at them, remembering perfectly, I thought, the exact spot where a pretty bunch used to grow. And I found them, after a protracted search—but no longer a pretty clump. One tree was perhaps fifteen feet high—a beanpole, which still put forth at the very top a few branchlets, one or two feet in length, just to prove itself alive. The rest of the bunch had been cut down to the ground. All that remained was a few suckers, each with a spray of green leaves. The sight was pitiful. Poor trees! They were surrounded by a dense wood, instead