1856.] Flora of tlie Western States. 81 



widest extent, is the watchword of the pioneer, deaf to the plaintive 

 wail of the doomed forests, at mid-day or in the twilight hour, and deaf 

 to that piteous prajer in their behalf, which every lover of nature 

 breathes in sympathy with the poet — 



"Woodman, spare that tree!" 



But the plea was in vain ; and now many a cotter, whose taste revives 

 as his leisure increases, repents himself too late of that rash vandalism 

 which has left him no tree to shelter him from the scorching sun in 

 summer, no grove to protect from the rough winds of winter. And 

 while his blundering art is now employed on a few starving saplings, 

 with the forlorn hope that posterity will live under their shade, he 

 thinks how gladly he would give hundreds, or thousands, perhaps, to 

 replace upon his naked pleasure-grounds that grand old elm, or maple, 

 or oak, and those beautiful vines which ascended to, and crowned their 

 summits with clusters ! 



Let us now look into the remains of these primeval forests, and observe 

 of what they are composed. The New Englander is surprised at the 

 various contrasts presented him with those mountain forests through 

 which he roamed in his youthful days. The lofty pine, rearing its tufted 

 head two hundred feet in air, the conical spruces, the prim cedars, the 

 larches, and all the evergreen tribes of the coniferse, he seeks for here in 

 vain. The birches are also wanting, those hardy denizens of mountain 

 ifvoods— the yellow," the black,t the white,| the canoe, |! — whose papery 

 bark, pendant tassels, aromatic wood, and, we add, whose tingling twigs, 

 were so familiar to his childhood. Not a solitary birch in all these 

 vallies, unless very far to the north ! And those Eastern species, which 

 he does meet with in the West — the maples, the oaks, the beeches, the 

 sycamores, etc. — he is scarcely able to recognise, so overgrown are they, 

 aspiring to the hight of a hundred feet, while there they scarcely arrive 

 at fifty. Compared, also, with the forests of New England, ours are 

 remarkable for their greater number of flowering trees and shrubs, which 

 in spring array the wilderness in robes of varied beauty. Among these 

 are conspicuous the dogwood. § a small tree, with a crooked trunk, and a 

 wide-spreading head, clothing itself in April with a multitude of large 

 white involucres, as with a sheet. This tree grows also at the East, but 

 far more sparingly. The red-bud,*- called also Judas-tree, is abundant 

 here, presenting to sight a solid mass of puiple bloom, before a single 



• Betula excelsia. t B. nigra. | B. popullfolia. |1 B. papjT:'acea. 

 § Cornus Florida. '"•'" Circis Canadensis. 

 VOL. I., NO. II. 6. 



