Excerpt from Country Cousins: Short Studies in the Natural History of the United States But, bless you! My repeated whacks, littering the whole neighbor hood with chips (which already had attracted a swarm of carpenter bees), seemed to have no more effect than would the cracking of hickory-nuts at the base of Pompey's Pillar. The harder I worked, the more I sweat; and the oftener a blow went wild the more that wicked neighbor of mine hugged himself with glee, and exasperated me by personal remarks and unfounded encouragement. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.