peared from nine-tenths of the area of its former habitat. I never
see a tulip-tree without recollecting the wild, strangely-hilarious cry
of the _Hylotomus pileatus_; and I cannot help associating the
giant bloom, its strength of form and vigor of color, with the scarlet
crest and king-like bearing of the bird. The big trees of California
excepted, our tulip-bearing Liriodendron is the largest growth of the
North-American forests; for, while the plane-tree and the
liquidambar-(sweet-gum) tree sometimes measure more in diameter near the
ground, they are usually hollow, and consequently bulged there, while
the tulip springs boldly out of the ground a solid shaft of clear,
clean, and sweetly-fragrant wood, sixty or seventy feet of the bole
being often entirely without limbs, with an average diameter of from
three to five feet. I found a stump in Indiana nearly eight feet in
diameter (measured three feet above the ground), and a tree in Clarke
County, Kentucky, of about the same girth, tapering slowly to the first
branch, fifty-eight feet from the root.

In nearly all the Western and Southern States the tulip is generally
called poplar, and the lumber manufactured from it goes by the same
name, while in the East it is known as white-wood. The bark is very
thick and cork-like, exhaling an odor peculiarly pungent and agreeable;
the buds and tender twigs in the spring have a taste entirely individual
and unique, very pleasant to some persons, but quite repellent to
others. Gray squirrels and the young of the fox-squirrel eat the buds
and flowers as well as the cone-shaped fruit. Humming-birds and
bumble-bees in the blossoming-time make a dreamy booming among the
shadowy sprays. A saccharine, sticky substance, not unlike honey-dew,
may often be found in the hollows of the immense petals, in search of
which large black ants make pilgrimages from the root to the top of the
largest tulip-trees, patiently toiling for two or three hours over the
rough bark, among the bewildering wrinkles of which it is, a wonder how
the way is kept with such unerring certainty. I have calculated that in
making such a journey the ant does what is equivalent to a man's
pedestrian tour from New York City to the Adirondacks by the roughest
route, and all for a smack of wild honey! But the ant makes his long
excursion with neither alpenstock nor luncheon, and without sleeping or
even resting on the way.

The tulip-tree grows best in warm loam in which