The spectacle first presented to us under the noble funereal pillars—the pillars, may we not say? of a stately temple—was a spectacle of death; not of a saddening death, but of a death rich, adorned, and graceful, such as Nature frequently vouchsafes to plants. At every step the old trunks of trees, felled but not uprooted, were clothed in an incomparable velvety green,—a tissue superbly woven of fine mosses soft to the touch, which delighted the eye by their changing aspects, their reflexes, and their shifting gleams.
But where was the animal life of the forest? Our ears soon grew accustomed to recognize and divine its presence. I do not refer to the whistle of the tomtits, or the strange laughter of the woodpecker, the evident lord of the place. I am thinking of a different people, against whom the birds wage war.
A great hum and murmur, sufficiently loud to drown the noise of a brook, warned us that the forest was haunted by wasps. Already we had discovered their fort, whence more than one endeavoured to lead us astray, suspecting our steps, and obviously ill-disposed towards us.
In the very localities least frequented by the wasps, light, hoarse, internal rustlings seemed to issue from the trees. Were these the voices of their genii, their Dryads? No, indeed; but of their mysterious enemies, the mighty populace of the shadows, which, following up the veins of the trunk and penetrating its entire extent, work out for themselves, with patient teeth, innumerable ways and channels and galleries. Sometimes nearly a hundred thousand scolyti[B] (for such is their name) are found in a single tree. The sickly fir is at length reduced by their teeth to the condition of a piece of delicate lace-work. Yet the bark remains intact, and deludes us with the phantom of life.
[B] A genus of Coleoptera.
How does the tree defend itself? Sometimes by its sap, which, while preserving its strength, asphyxiates the enemy; but more frequently it is assisted by a friend, a physician, from without—the woodpecker—which carefully auscultates it, taps and strikes it with its strong hammer, and with persevering ardour watches for and pursues the nibbling colony.
Is this internal combat between the two lives, the animal and the vegetable, really understood? Of this I cannot be sure, and there are times when I think myself deceived.
In that silence which was not silence, a something—I know not what—assured us that the dead forest was in truth alive, and on the point of breaking forth into speech. We entered it full of hope, and believing that we should discover some secret. We felt certain that to our inquiring spirit a great manifold Spirit was about to reply. Though fatigued by the walk, and in an infirm state of health, I felt great pleasure in the search I had undertaken in these pallid glooms. I loved to see before me a person deeply moved, and enthusiastically smitten by their great mysteries. Stick in hand, she advanced into this fantastic twilight, interrogating the sombre forest, and seeking, as it were, the Virgilian "golden bough."