SMALL FOEEST PLANTS. 289 



after it became a heath ; but what evidence is there to control the 

 general presumption that this heath was preceded by a forest, in 

 whose 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 that of furnish- 

 ing a slender pasturage to cattle allowed to roam in the woods ; 



* Writers on vegetable physiology record numerous instances where seeds 

 have grown after lying dormant for ages. The following cases are mentioned 

 by Dr. D wight (Travels, ii., pp. 438, 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 

 hickory."' 



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 

 HiU, 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 sav- 

 ages 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 chest- 

 nut tree There was not a single pine whose seeds were, or probably 



for ages had 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 

 extent and its figure, and that there were none in the neighborhood, are deci- 

 sive 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, Thoreau, Excursions, p. 135 et seq. 

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