About a hundred feet or more of the trunk is usually branchless, but its massive simplicity is relieved by the bark furrows, which instead of making an irregular network run evenly parallel, like the fluting of an architectural column, and to some extent by tufts of slender sprays that wave lightly in the winds and cast flecks of shade, seeming to have been pinned on here and there for the sake of beauty only.

Miles across the valley one hears the clamor of their high, keen flutings in the mating weather.

And up from the South following these old honkers came the snow geese, the Wilson geese, and all the other little geese (we ignorantly called all of them "brants"), with their wild flutings like the high notes of clarinetsand the ponds became speckled with teal and coot.