SMALL FOREST PLANTS. 297 
shade the vegetables which dropped the seeds in question might 
have grown ¢ * 
Although, therefore, the destruction of a wood and the re- 
claiming of the soil to agricultural uses suppose the death of 
its smaller dependent flora, these revolutions do not exclude 
the possibility of its resurrection. In a practical view of the 
subject, however, we must admit that when the woodman fells 
a tree he sacrifices the colony of humbler growths which had 
vegetated under its protection. Some wood-plants are known 
to possess valuable medicinal properties, and experiment may 
show that the number of these is greater than we now suppose. 
Few of them, however, have any other economical value than 
* Writers on vegetable physiology record numerous instances where seeds 
have grown after lying dormant for ages. The following cases are mentioned 
by Dr. Dwight (77avels, ii., pp. 458, 439). 
““The lands [in Panton, Vermont], which have here been once cultivated, 
and again permitted to lie waste for several years, yield a rich and fine growth of 
hickory [Carya porcina]. Of this wood there is not, I believe, a single tree 
in any original forest within fifty miles from this spot. The native growth was 
here white pine, of which I did not see a single stem in a whole grove of hick- 
ory.” 
The hickory is a walnut, bearing a fruit too heavy to be likely to be carried 
fifty miles by birds, and besides, I believe it is not eaten by any bird indige- 
nous to Vermont. We have seen, however, on a former page, that birds trans- 
port the nutmeg, which when fresh is probably as heavy-as the walnut, from 
one island of the Indian archipelago to another. 
‘A field, about five miles from Northampton, on an eminence called Rail 
Hill, was cultivated about a century ago. The native growth here, and in all 
the surrounding region, was wholly oak, chestnut, etc. As the field belonged 
to my grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its history. It con- 
tained about five acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As the 
savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this ground 
there sprang up a grove of white pines covering the field and retaining its fig- 
ure exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a single oak or chestnut 
tree. .. . There was not a single pine whose seeds were, or, probably, had 
for ages been, sufficiently near to have been planted on this spot. The fact 
that these white pines covered this field exactly, so as to preserve both its ex- 
tent and its figure, and that there were none in the neighborhood, are decisive 
proofs that cultivation brought up the seeds of a former forest within the 
limits of vegetation, and gave them an opportunity to germinate.” 
See, on the Succession of the Forest, THorEavu, Hvcursions, p. 135 et sega. 
