chance of meeting an occasional savage or a grizzly-bear."

"Go on, my boy," said Ned, with a touch of sarcasm in his tone, "you
haven't read me half a lesson yet. Besides, the `many' you refer to,
are there not hundreds, ay, thousands, whose chief enjoyment in
travelling is derived from the historical associations called up by the
sight of the ruined castles and temples of classic ground--whose delight
it is to think that here Napoleon crossed the Alps, as Hannibal did
before him, (and many a nobody has done after him), that there, within
these mouldering ruins, the oracles of old gave forth their voice--
forgetting, perhaps, too easily, while they indulge in these
reminiscences of the past, that the warrior's end was wholesale murder,
and that the oracle spoke only to deceive poor ignorant human nature.
Ha! I would not give one hearty dash into pure, uncontaminated nature
for all the famous `tours' put together."

Ned looked round him as he spoke, with a glow of enthusiasm that neither
badinage nor philosophy could check.

"Just look around thee," he continued; "open thine ears, Tom, to the
music of yon cataract, and expand thy nostrils to the wild perfume of
these pines."

"I wouldn't, at this moment," quietly remarked Tom, "exchange for it the
perfume of that venison steak, of which I pray thee to be more
regardful, else thou'lt upset it into the fire."

"Oh! Tom--incorrigible!"

"Not at all, Ned. While you flatter yourself that you have all the
enthusiastic study of nature to yourself, here have I succeeded, within
the last few minutes, in solving a problem in natural history which has
puzzled my brains for weeks past."

"And, pray thee, what may that be, most sapient philosopher?"

"Do you see yonder bird clinging to the stem of that tree, and pitching
into it as if it were its most deadly foe?"

"I do--a woodpecker it is."

"Well," continued Tom, sitting down before his portion of the venison
steak, "that bird has cleared up two points in natural history, which
have, up till this time, been a mystery to me. The one was, why
woodpeckers should spend their time in pecking the trees so incessantly;
the other was, how it happened that several trees I have cut down could
have had so many little holes bored in their trunks, and an acorn neatly
inserted into each. Now that little bird has settled the question for
me. I caught him in the act not ten minutes ago. He flew to that tree
with an acorn in h