16 NANTUCKET TREES 



There Is other roadside grovth today. There are 

 thickets of sassafras and sour gum; vild cherry as shrub 

 and tree offers its fruit to the birds; scrub oak, shoul- 

 der high, forms many impenetrable "scrubs." The island 

 must have a much more sylvan aspect than vhen Crevecoeur 

 sav it in 1782 or Thoreau in 1854. Thoreau -wrote in his 

 diary, "There is not a tree to be seen, except such as 

 are set out about houses ... .This island must look exact- 

 ly like a prairie, except that the viev in clear veather 

 is bounded by the sea.... The nearest approach to voods 

 that I saw vas the swamps, vhere the blueberries, maples, 

 etc., are higher than one's head." 45 Nevertheless by 

 airplane viev today Nantucket is still open moorland 

 vith thickets of vood merely filling the hollovs and 

 bordering the roads. During a summer on Nantucket ones 

 eye becomes so accustomed to the fev trees and their re- 

 duced scale that, on a return to the mainland, driving 

 inland from Nev Bedford, one looks vith surprise at the 

 tall trees vhich border the highway. 



Without doubt sheep grazing has helped to keep 

 dovn vooded grovth on Nantucket. Godvin includes this 

 as a factor in the establishment of English heaths. 

 "...While biotic factors such as sheep-grazing, very 

 close eating dovn by rabbits, treading, burning and tree 

 felling make very heavy and varied impress on the vege- 

 tation." 17 Sheep are mentioned in all the early tovn 

 records on Nantucket. Without them housevives vould 

 have been hard put for their homespun. In the first 

 half of the 19th century Nantucket land holders invested 

 heavily in sheep farming; at one time the sheep on the 

 island vere estimated at 10,000. These grazed at large 

 over the Commons until 1848 vhen, by vote of the pro- 

 prietors of the common land, the sheep vere restrained 

 from pasturage outside of enclosed tracts. 15 This re- 

 straint and the fact that sheep farming has been for the 

 most part given up on Nantucket have probably been fac- 

 tors in the Increased vooded areas of the 20th century. 



There is another chapter to the tree story of 

 the 19th and 20th centuries. During this period there 

 has been much tree planting on the island, particularly 

 in the tovn. The Inquirer & Mirror in Its Memoir of 

 One Hundred Years prints a viev of Nantucket of probable 



