FOREST 1 REES. I.5T 



name to our little forest species. Then there are the Claytonias, with 

 delicate pencilled pink flowers ; and, just at the edge of the forest, the 

 pure ivory-petalled Blood-root ( Sauguinaria Canadensis) opens its starry 

 blossoms to the sunshine on bright Spring days. 



Mingled with these fair children of the deep forest shades are Ferns 

 — graceful, elegant Ferns — and Club Mosses, like m.iniature Pine trees. 

 A kindly nursing mother is the forest, to these her lowly offspring : the 

 earth their cradle, the pure snow their coverlet, warm, soft and light, to 

 shield the tender nurslings from the Winter's cold and biting winds. 



Before the shrubs in our gardens have made any show of greenness, 

 in the warmer shelter of the woods, the Fly-Honeysuckle has put forth 

 its bright green leaves, and the soft brown downy winter-buds of the 

 Moose-wood have burst and shown the yellow funnel-shaped clustered 

 flowers. How carefully had these little flowers been protected and 

 guarded from injury on the grey leafless branches through the frosts of 

 winter in their downy coverings. How little do we understand the 

 beneficent nature of that Great Greater who careth even for the embryo 

 leaf and flower. 



To those who love the forest and its productions, the continual 

 destruction of our native trees will ever be a source of regret, even 

 while obliged to acknowledge that so it must be, for with the change of 

 soil must necessarily disappear many, or indeed, most of the rare 

 indigenous plants that are sheltered by the woods and nourished by the 

 decaying vegetation of the trees and shrubs beneath which they grow. 

 Exposed to the force of drying winds and hot sunshine, these children 

 of the soil perish and are no more seen. 



That close observer and sagacious writer, John Evelyn, in his 

 valuable work on " Forest Trees," writing of the denuding of the 

 forests in Italy and other European countries says: "We find the 

 entire species of some trees totally lost in countries where they once 

 abounded, as if there had never been such planted or growing in them. 

 Be this applied to Fir, Pine, and several other trees; accidents in soil, air, 

 &c., which we daily find, produce strange alterations in our woods. The 

 Beech almost constantly succeeding the Oak, to our great disadvantage." 

 This author elsewhere deprecates the destruction of the forest 

 trees in England, and the necessity for planting to replace the more 

 valuable timbers — the Oak and Pine. Evelyn wrote and published his 

 " Sylva " during the reign of the last of the Stuart Kings, forseeing the 

 time would come when the country would have to be supplied with her 

 building material from other lands. 



Circumstances continually re-produce themselves. May not Evelyn's 

 remarks apply to our Canadian forests ? Espec'ally to the Pines and 



