64-2 Natural History of Nova Scotia, 



crops for six or seven years, or, if cleared without much 

 burning, for a longer period ; but that it finally " runs out " 

 (to use a common expression), and requires a hundred loads of 

 manure to the acre to make it produce, for three years, as 

 good crops as it did when new. But should it be pastured, 

 the soil, if not originally very fertile, appears slowly to become 

 more barren for thirty or forty years : yet, if bushes should 

 be allowed to overrun this worn-out ground, it will, upon 

 cutting them down, be found to have improved in proportion 

 to the time it has been covered by them. 



It appears, therefore, to be necessary to the preservation 

 of the fertility of the earth, that it should be covered entirely 

 with a coat of vegetation, since, from the time that a growth 

 of young wood springs up, till the forest has reached its full 

 size, the ground that it covers is becoming every day more 

 fertile ; but when the wood is destroyed, and prevented from 

 returning by the pasturage of cattle, it is for many years con- 

 stantly becoming more barren. The cause of this deterioration 

 of the soil will be readily conceived, by reflecting that those 

 elements which distinguish a fertile soil easily assume an aerial 

 form, and that they are in that state absorbed by the leaves 

 of plants, and, where these have been in a great measure de- 

 stroyed by pasturage, are borne by the winds to those situa- 

 tions where they are arrested by a luxuriant vegetation. As 

 we must observe, then, that the soil, so frequently impoverished 

 when managed by man, always retains its fertility in a state 

 of nature, it must be important to the agriculturist to attend 

 to the operations of the great Cultivator. For, rough and 

 rude as our forests appear, they form a portion of the " garden 

 of God." In all their various productions, there is nothing 

 superfluous or out of place. 



The student of natural history in America possesses some 

 advantages over the inhabitants of its mother country. He 

 has under his eye tracts where the works of nature have not 

 been disturbed by man. In Europe, some persons of great 

 knowledge appear still to doubt whether there ever was a 

 period in which the land generally presented the appearance 

 of a forest, and whether the soil of peat bogs is formed from 

 decayed vegetables. Strange as these doubts must appear to 

 any person of observation brought up in the woods of Ame- 

 rica, still it is curious to observe the operations of nature in 

 preserving forest, and in forming this " savings' bank," this 

 reserve of fuel for the use of man, destined for his supply 

 when he shall, by his negligence, have destroyed the forest 

 wood. 



Nearly all this province has, it is certain, at no very distant 



