CHAPTER III 



A TREE'S PERILOUS LIFE 



Hemlock spruce and pine forests— Story of a pine seedling— Its struggles 

 and dangers — The gardener's boot — Turpentine of pines — The giant 

 saw^y — Bark beetles— Their effect on music— Storm and strength 

 of trees— Tall trees and long seaweeds— Eucalyptus, big trees- 

 Age of trees — Venerable sequoias, oaks, chestnuts, and olives — 

 Baobab and Dragontree — Rabbits as woodcutters — Fire as protection 

 — Sacred fires— Dug-out and birch-bark canoes— Lake dweUings — 

 Grazing animals and forest destruction — First kind of cultivation — 

 Old forests in England and Scotland — Game preserving, 



*' The murmuring pines and the hemlocks 

 Stand like harpers hoar with beards that rest on their 

 bosom. " — LongfelUm. 



OF course the Hemlock here alluded to is not the 

 " hemlock rank growing on the weedy bank,'' which 

 the cow is adjured not to eat in Wordsworth's well- 

 known lines. (If the animal had, however, obeyed the poet's 

 wishes and eaten " mellow cowslips," it would probably have 

 been seriously ill.) The " Hemlock" is the Hemlock spmce, 

 a fine handsome tree which is common in the forests of 

 Eastern North America. 



These primeval forests of Pine and Fir and Spruce have 

 always taken the fancy of poets. They are found covering 

 craggy and almost inaccessible mountain valleys; even a 

 tourist travelling by train cannot but be impressed by their 

 sombre, gloomy monotony, by their obstinacy in growing on 



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