350 SPONTANEITY. 



nature. Many such tracts have been neglected, and 

 have lain fallow for the greater part of a century. These 

 grounds now present a fair example of that spontaneity 

 which is far more attractive than the tangled and unin- 

 terrupted growth of the original forest. The previous 

 subjugation of the soil has caused the plants that have 

 since grown up there to become beautifully grouped by 

 tendencies which are not entirely destroyed by the labor 

 of the rustic farmer. 



As the seeds of all plants that originally occupied this 

 tract were destroyed by tillage for many successive years, 

 the ground must depend on seeds afterwards deposited by 

 birds, quadrupeds, winds, and waters for the renewal of 

 its vegetation. Wherever a cluster of thorny plants hap- 

 pens to obtain root, it forms a nucleus where other 

 seeds are detained and sown. A stump of a tree or a 

 boulder, or a heap of stones or rubbish, would constitute 

 the centre for many similar clusters. There plants would 

 soon spring up, and become a protection for others, which 

 would gradually widen the assemblage, until each would 

 become a little islet of trees and shrubs, separated by the 

 intervening spaces of natural lawn, pastured perhaps by 

 domestic animals, and form a style of spontaneous group- 

 ing which is entirely inimitable. 



Other similar tracts, after being cleared of wood, have 

 been left immediately to nature, before they had suffered 

 any reduction by the plough. The renewal of the forest 

 in such cases is always very rapid. The trees come up 

 more closely and in greater numbers of species than on 

 the tilled ground, but they are not grouped. The soil 

 being full of the stumps of trees in a living state, and of 

 the roots and seeds of many different species of plants, 

 there is hardly a square rod in any part of the tract that 

 is not crowded with trees and shrubs after a very few 

 years. Every living stump of a tree gives out several 



